Same-sex marriage has been in the news a lot lately. North Carolina voted to ban it, along with civil partnerships, and a day later Obama held an interview where he voiced his personal support for same-sex marriage. Although I am frustrated at the limits of the support Obama gave, I also understand that it is a pretty big symbolic victory, particularly considering the fact that we’re right in the middle of election season. I also understand those people who are heaping praise on Obama and are unwilling to criticize his statement as perhaps not going far enough. I get it.
The relationship between federal and state laws in the U.S. is surprisingly complicated. Sometimes state and federal laws clash. Sometimes the federal government has to persuade state governments to enact certain laws. Rarely is the relationship as simple as federal trumps state. In many ways it’s a good system. The U.S. is geographically and culturally quite diverse, and the federal system we have helps ensure that the cultural and political norms of one region don’t overshadow the norms of another. However, as it’s a system that was created by people, it’s not perfect. There is one aspect to our system that I wish was more national instead of federal, and that is with regards to civil rights.
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On November 4, 2008 I sat in a pub in Durham, U.K. with a bunch of other U.S. students watching the election results come in with anticipation. However, unlike most of those other students, my attention wasn’t really focused on whether Obama would be elected or not. I kept waiting to hear about the results from the three states that had ballot measures banning same-sex marriage. I was particularly anxious about my home state of California. Up until just a couple weeks before the election I had been sure that the ban would be shot down. It’s California, one of the most liberal states in the country. Yet as I sat in that pub, refreshing a website with election data every 30 seconds, I was really worried. The Yes on 8 Campaign had seemed to be so much more successful than I had thought it would be.
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Contrary to
what a lot of people outside the United Kingdom think, same-sex marriage isn’t
actually legal in the U.K. Instead they have civil partnerships, which grant
all the same rights as marriage, except for the label. There is a home office consultation underway asking
the population its opinion on civil same-sex marriage. Pretty much the U.K. is
considering changing its policy regarding same-sex marriage and so it’s
conducting a poll, sort of.
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