30 years on...

Today the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in which they will determine whether California Proposition 8 banning same sex marriage is Constitutional.

For the Court to be deciding this question, versus the question they were asking in 1986 in the case of Bowers v. Hardwick and the decision they rendered is telling in how society has changed.

Bowers was a case in which the Court upheld the State of Georgia's sodomy law. Justice White (the Roger Taney of this issue, as opposed to Scalia who is just the modern James McReynolds of everything) wrote of the right of gay men to have consensual sex:

...if respondent's submission is limited to the voluntary sexual conduct between consenting adults, it would be difficult, except by fiat, to limit the claimed right to homosexual conduct while leaving exposed to prosecution adultery, incest, and other sexual crimes even though they are committed in the home. We are unwilling to start down that road.

Rick Santorum could not have expressed it any better (i.e. worse).  The Court took fifteen years to reverse this travesty.

And now, nearly thirty years later, the question has progressed to this point. No thanks to the Supreme Court.

[cross-posted at Firedoglake]