Some Thoughts -- Both Personal and Otherwise -- About Same-Sex Marriage
-- Posted by Neil H. Buchanan "Did I say hooray?" Professor Dorf's post analyzing New York's Marriage Equality Act was appropriately celebratory. With the initial surprise now giving way to deep satisfaction, attention has turned to what it all really means, who deserves credit for this historic turn of events, and what can be learned for other major political battles. One bittersweet aspect of the new world in New York involves thinking about all of the people who did not live to enjoy the spoils of victory. Thousands of people died before their time, never imagining that marriage would have been an option for them during the course of a full lifetime. (One such couple was Gabriel Casuso, who died in 1988, and Kevin Buchanan, who died in 1991. It is a joy to imagine how those two men, who would now be in their mid-50's, would have celebrated the right to have their relationship recognized by the state as a marriage.) As The New York Times columnist Frank...