A reader turns our attention to another marriage equality fight:
Yesterday, a state court trial judge (a good friend of my father’s and a fine judge who subsequently announced his impending retirement) held that Wisconsin’s domestic partnership law was legal under the Wisconsin constitution. This is only an issue because Wisconsin passed a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage or anything “substantially similar.” Of course, when the amendment was being sold to voters in 2006, its supporters claimed that this language was meaningless and would not affect civil unions or domestic partnership benefits. (The amendment didn’t pass by much, and had its supporters admitted that it would ban civil unions, it likely would have failed.) But in 2009, when a Democratic governor and legislature passed a law creating a domestic partnership registry, it was immediately challenged by the religious right.
The ridiculously named Wisconsin Family Action filed suit, claiming that domestic partnership were “substantially similar” to marriage and thus barred by the state constitution. Wisconsin’s new, and extraordinarily divisive and dogmatic, governor, Scott Walker, recently fired the attorney defending the law, claimed he thought it was unconstitutional, and the refused to allow the state to defend it. Lambda took over the case, apparently, and won the day – at least at this point.
With a highly partisan and majority-Republican state supreme court, I’m pessimistic about the domestic partnership law’s ultimate chances. And unfortunately, amending the Wisconsin constitution is a colossal ordeal – the state legislature must approve any constitutional amendment twice and it has to win on a referendum. I’m afraid that Wisconsin is going to be well behind the arc of history on gay rights.
The Dish 