LOUISIANA

The media keeps describing the state constitutional amendment in Louisiana as an amendment that bans civil marriage for gays. They’re right. But it does so, so much more than that. Here’s the text:

Marriage in the state of Louisiana shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman. No official or court of the state of Louisiana shall construe this constitution or any state law to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any member of a union other than the union of one man and one woman. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized. No official or court of the state of Louisiana shall recognize any marriage contracted in any other jurisdiction which is not the union of one man and one woman.

This is a radical denial of any civil protections for gay couples at all – the most radical attack on an American minority since Jim Crow. Even the mildest protections for a gay couple that are integral to any meaningful bond – visitation rights in hospital, inheritance rights, the right not to testify against one another in court, and so on – will now be vulnerable to legal challenge or flat-out denied gay couples under the law. And the margin of victory is stunning: a full 80 percent want to keep gay people permanently without any protections for their relationships or any incentives to get together and settle down. It’s too depressing for words.