sleepless night

In August of 1982, in Atlanta, Georgia - Mr. Michael Hardwick had a very bad day. Earlier in the year Hardwick had been given a public drinking citation by a City of Atlanta policeman, there was some mix up on the date written on the ticket - and Mr. Hardwick missed his court date, upon learning this, he went right down town, paid the 50 bucks and got on with his life....
A few weeks later the same officer that had issued the ticket came to Hardwicks home - not knowing the citation was paid and moot - the story goes off track here with one side saying a house guest opened the door for the policeman, the other side saying the door was just left ajar - either way, the officer came in, and searched the house for Mr. Hardwick, finding him behind a closed door , in his own bedroom, in his own house having " consensual oral sex "........
Bang ! You are under arrest - both of you... Sodomy is a crime in Georgia. The local DA chose not to bring the case before the grand jury - the first step in going to a trial , but Hardwick wanted more and backed by the ACLU, he sued Georgia Attorney General ( and there by the entire state ) Michael Bowers - going all the way to the Supreme Court where in 1986 the court found in favor of the state of Georgia - your house, your bedroom door, YOU mean nothing......Got it?

Set law of the land and a lovely way to grow up, we fast forward to 1996 when the court ruled on Romer v Evans - a case out of Colorado where the voters in the state passed a constitutional amendment stating that " would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to recognize gay and lesbian individuals as aprotected class " . 

Got it? Anti sodomy laws are perfectly constitutional and the people of Colorado are going to make sure that no gay or lesbian ever gets anything close to equal protection.....

But 10 years had passed, 10 years and a plague.Ten  years and not just a few drag queens at the Stonewall Inn fighting back, but an entire country of LGBT people and their allies rising up in the face of a realcrisis. This time we won - a new court and with a 6-3 vote the amendment was ruled unconstitutional.... 

Scalia and Thomas were on the court then, these are some of Justice Scalia's remarks:

• Amendment 2 did not deny homosexuals access to the political process but merely made it more difficult to enact laws that they favored. He noted that the majority's result stood in flat contradiction to the court's earlier decision in Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), in which it had ruled that laws outlawingsodomy are not unconstitutional. That was based on the fact that Bowers had rejected a rational-basis challenge to sodomy laws on the grounds that traditional moral disapproval furnished such a rational basis, and argued that "If it is rational to criminalize the conduct, surely it is rational to deny special favor and protection to those with a self-avowed tendency or desire to engage in the conduct."
• The holding was difficult to reconcile with Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333 (1890), and why §501 of the Idaho Revised Statutes was not an "impermissible targeting" of polygamists, but Amendment 2 was an "impermissible targeting" of homosexuals, asking "Has the Court concluded that the perceived social harm of polygamy is a 'legitimate concern of government,' and the perceived social harm of homosexuality is not?"
• Arguing against what he saw as judicial activism and a "Kulturkampf" (culture war), he held that as the Constitution says nothing on the topic, it should be decided by democratic processes, and that "it [is] no business of the courts (as opposed to the political branches) to take sides in this culture war. But the Court today has done so, not only by inventing a novel and extravagant constitutional doctrine to take the victory away from traditional forces, but even by verbally disparaging as bigotry adherence to traditional attitudes."

His dissent ends by opining that "Today's opinion has no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to. The people of Colorado have adopted an entirely reasonable provision which does not even disfavor homosexuals in any substantive sense, but merely denies them preferential treatment. Amendment 2 is designed to prevent piecemeal deterioration of the sexual morality favored by a majority of Coloradans, and is not only an appropriate means to that legitimate end, but a means that Americans have employed before. Striking it down is an act, not of judicial judgment, but of political will."

Lawrence v Texas and DOMA

Bowers was the law of the land until 2003 when a case with almost all of the exact same details made its way to the Supreme Court out of Texas. Police were in an apartment,Mr. Lawrence's and  walked in on two guys doing what two guys do - and its off to the pokey ( where btw, a lot of guys do these sorts of things ...). Really, Sodomy laws in the 21st century ? 6-3 with the Bobsie Twins naturally voting against it...
Also back in 1996 way out in little Hawaii some loan Senator or Govenor or just some guy in a hula skirt said the term : "same sex marriage " causing a total freak out melt down in all of Washington. Lead through the nose by the Christian right, Bill Clinton signed the law:

In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.

Fast Forward

SO, all of this ,California's Prop 8 and all these years of cases and and years , decades of work on both sides comes to a full on head TOMORROW. I am a wreck.
Are Prop 8 and DOMA Constitutional , Are Neil and I full Citizens of this country ?
Part of me is just amazed that EVERYONE Is not on edge about this - Ill be here early in the am..10:00 am, and everything afterwards.....