For gay marriage

[davidinalameda]

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/189/editorials/For_gay_marriage+.shtml



FOR 200 YEARS American society has drawn a steadily expanding circle of rights: the rights of blacks, then women, and then 18-year-olds to vote; of minorities, women, gays, and the physically disabled to be free from discrimination; of single mothers, adoptive parents, and other nontraditional families to receive government benefits. In the 1967 case Loving v. Virginia, the US Supreme Court ruled that the right to marry could not be restricted by race. In 1993 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the right to adopt children could not be denied on the basis of sexual orientation. In 1999 the Vermont Supreme Court found that the benefits of legal marriage could not be withheld from lesbian and gay couples. Now seven same-sex couples have petitioned the SJC for the right to marry under civil law. Their stories of courtship and commitment are so ordinary, and their claim to equal benefits so compelling, that it seems inevitable the circle of rights will eventually widen to enfold them as well. We think the SJC should say that day has come.