but the Struggle Continues…

                                                                              

 

David Boies

and Theodore B. Olson

led the legal team that secured in the Supreme Court the decision striking down as unconstitutional California’s prohibition of gay marriage.

This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark legislation that ended racial segregation in public accommodations and outlawed employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, and sex

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The act opened the doors of opportunity to groups who, for centuries, had been relegated to second-class citizenship and placed the power and imprimatur of the federal government behind the promise of equal rights under the law.

Yet, at the same time, Americans continued to discriminate against gay men and lesbians. That discrimination was sanctioned by the federal government - including by the same administration that had taken such momentous steps on issues of racial and gender equality.

In 1966, for example, the chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission sent a letter to the Mattachine Society of Washington - an early gay-rights group - defending the prohibition on the federal employment of gay men and lesbians. The chairman wrote that discrimination was warranted in light of the “ evulsion of other employees by homosexual conduct and . . . the unavoidable subjection of the sexual deviate to erotic stimulation through on-the-job use of common toilet, shower, and living facilities."

Similarly, when the Pride Foundation in California applied for tax-exempt status as a charitable organization in 1974, the IRS denied the application on the ground that the group’s policies "carry a serious risk of contributing to a more widespread development of homosexual tendencies . . . and a consequent increase in the prevalence of what is still considered a deviant sexual behavior."

The nation has made tremendous progress since those letters were written, thanks to marriage-equality advocates such as Frank Kameny of the Mattachine Society - and later by path-breaking lawyers such as Evan Wolfson, the intellectual forerunner of the movement, and Mary Bonauto, who won the ground-breaking Massachusetts Supreme Court decision overturning that state's exclusion of gays and lesbians from marriage. We joined the efforts of these and other pioneers in 2009, filing a suit that challenged the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that denied gay and lesbian Californians the right to marry. After an exhaustive, 12-day trial - during which the court heard from the world's leading experts on marriage, parenting, discrimination, and sexual orientation - Judge Vaughn Walker concluded that Proposition 8 violated the Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection because it did "nothing more than enshrine in the California constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples." Such discrimination, Walker found, was unwarranted and unfair because the evidence showed “ hat same-sex marriage has and will have no adverse effects on society or the institution of marriage."

Judges, legislators, and voters around the country have reached the same conclusion again and again over the past five years. When we filed suit challenging Proposition 8, only three states permitted gay men and lesbians to marry. Today, 19 states and the District of Columbia have marriage equality, the discriminatory marriage laws of 12 other states have been struck down, and the country appears set on the path to full, nationwide marriage equality in the near future.

But even if that remarkable goal is achieved, the civil rights struggle of gay and lesbian Americans will be far from over. As far as the federal government is concerned, it is perfectly acceptable to fire an employee because he is gay, to refuse to serve a customer because she is a lesbian, or to evict a couple because they are in a gay or lesbian relationship. Until we address these gaping holes in the federal antidiscrimination laws, by enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, for example, the fundamental promise of equality on which our nation was founded will remain unredeemed.

http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20140615_Struggle_remains_for_gay_rights.html#vof4rBkTXiZdqtly.99