If you're wondering why Facebook has gone red this week it's because the Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Prop 8 and marriage equality.
Let's hope SCOTUS can distinguish between privilege and equality. Even people close to me biologically have trouble understanding this is a civil issue and not some kind of "special rights".
One of the litigants in a case is Edie Windsor who had to pay estate taxes to the tune of $360K after the death of her partner of 44 years - money she wouldn't have to pay if her partner were a man. Or my friend Lavi Soloway who has for years been fighting to stop DOMA and deportation of same-sex partners with foreign-born partners. The fact I have never been able to consider the option marrying my foreign born partners so they could stay in the USA. Consider the 1,138 rights and privileges granted by the government to married couples denied to some in the land of all men created equal.
We've changed the definition of marriage from trading two cows for your daughter to Loving vs Virginia which allowed blacks to marry whites, another issue that could not be solved when the majority was allowed to vote on the rights of a minority. That is not democracy, that's tyranny.
Let's hope this highly politicized high court (Scalia, are you kidding me?) honors a constitution whose framework allows for it to bend toward equality in the long arc of justice.
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