同性婚姻在美国各州各个击破捷报频传

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State by state, same-sex marriage marches across America                    

February 25, 2012        

                                                            

                               
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                The fight for same-sex marriage continues across America. Photo: The New York Times
        
                                    Young people overwhelmingly support right of gays to marry but conservative opponents vow to fight trend at the polls, writes Curtis Tate.
            With supporters of same-sex marriage racking up victories in state legislatures and federal courts, the long battle over the contentious  issue may settle in their favour. However, opponents of gay marriage vow to take the matter directly to voters wherever they can - an arena in which they have never lost. While Americans overall are about evenly divided on the matter, younger people overwhelmingly support the right of same-sex couples to marry, suggesting it is a matter of time for change to take effect.
            For supporters of marriage equality it is still an incremental process that is moving state by state. No present court case will result in same-sex marriage nationwide, legal experts say, and the best near-term outcome for supporters will be that some states will allow it, and the federal government will defer to each state on the question of who is married and who isn't.
            ''I think the country is likely to be divided on this issue for a long time,''  Andrew Koppelman a law professor at Northwestern University, said.
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            Increasingly, courts and state legislatures have decided that same-sex couples should not be treated differently from opposite-sex couples.
            On Wednesday, a federal district judge in California struck down the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act, which blocks married same-sex couples from receiving a  variety of federal benefits. The decision doesn't have binding precedent outside that district.
            And  this month, a panel of judges on the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Proposition 8, the voter-approved Californian law that took away from gay and lesbian couples the right to marry, which they had gained only months earlier. Legal experts say  the Supreme Court is likely to have the final say on both laws.
            On Thursday, the Maryland legislature passed a bill to legalise same-sex marriage. The Democrat Governor, Martin O'Malley,  said he would sign it, which will make Maryland the eighth state to give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.
            If same-sex marriage opponents are losing in the courts and  legislatures, they are fully prepared to take the issue to the voters - and that one  arena they have never lost. Every state that has voted on same-sex marriage has rejected  it, and that is what opponents are counting on in Maryland and Washington state, where a bill passed the legislature  this month and was signed by the Democrat Governor, Chris Gregoire.
            ''We'll leave no stone unturned,'' said Kathy Dempsey, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Catholic Conference, which opposes same-sex marriage.
            New Jersey's Republican Governor, Chris Christie, vetoed his state's same-sex marriage bill this month, saying that voters should decide.
            According to a Pew Research Centre poll in November, 46 per cent of Americans supported same-sex marriage and 44 per cent opposed it. That is a dramatic shift from 2006, when the same poll showed that 33 per cent supported it and 56 per cent opposed it.
            ''Public opinion is moving pretty quickly,''  said Jane Schacter, a professor at Stanford University and an expert on sexual orientation law.  ''The long-term outcome is pretty clear. The question is how long does it take.''