If you’re still holding your breath for Wyoming to change their same-sex marriage policies, you can exhale once. But don’t inhale just yet.
The new legal protections that are being given to same-sex marriages are thanks to the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. We will get back to Wyoming in a minute.
On Monday, the Justice Department instructed all of its employees nationwide to give lawful same-sex marriages equal protection under the law in every program it administers. Basically, from courthouse proceedings to prison visits to the compensation of surviving spouses to public safety officers, same-sex marriages have the same rights as traditional marriages.
“This means that, in every courthouse, in every proceeding, and in every place where a member of the Department of Justice stand on behalf of the United States—they will strive to ensure that same-sex marriages receive the same privileges, protections, and rights as opposite-sex marriages under federal law,” Holder said in a speech Saturday night when he announced the new policy.
This is just the latest series of moves toward equality by the Obama administration and the Department of Justice in particular, to undermine the authority and sovereignty of the states to make their own determinations to regulation of the institution of marriage.
What many are asking is, how does this affect the fact that the states are supposed to be in charge of their own laws and legislation in the realm of marriage. Granted they still have the say over whether or not same-sex marriage is legal in their own state, but that is slowly becoming all they have say in.
Here in Wyoming, things are slowly looking like they might possibly change. Democratic Rep. Cathy Connolly proposed a bill that would rewrite the current definition of marriage in our state from being a civil contract between a man and a woman to simply being a civil contract between two people, no mention of their sex. Talk about equal rights!
Connolly says she wants Wyoming to be on the right side of history on the issue of equal rights for gays and lesbians. Ready to inhale yet? Though this has finally been proposed in Wyoming, by a lesbian democratic rep, that doesn’t mean that we are going to see an actual change. We are still a state that is in majority conservative, something tells me that the pushing of a democratic rep is not going to budge things enough.
Let’s go back to Holder. People have been calling for his impeachment for some time now. Back in November, Congressman Pete Olson (R-TX) set forth articles of impeachment against Holder for high crimes and misdemeanor. Olson stated that for nearly five years Holder has “systematically deceived Congress and destroyed the credibility of the Justice Department.” Olson was joined by a slew of Republican reps who agree on the issue of Holder’s impeachment. But don’t look for him to leave anytime soon.
Apparently he also fosters hostility toward religious freedom. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that there are quite a few people who just don’t care because of his pushing for same-sex marriage equality.
On a federal level, equality is becoming fairly widespread. State authority on the issue is being undermined. Though the states deserve their rights to be upheld and their legislation to not be trod all over by the Department of Justice, perhaps in this case it isn’t so bad. Maybe now the equality state will be pushed to true equality. In the meantime, I’m still not going to hold my breath.
