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  Breaking News: Same-Sex Marriage in Connecticut!

  Posted Friday, October 10, 2008 12:02 PM | By E.J. Graff

  It's official: Same-sex couples can now enter legally recognized marriages in three American states—Massachusetts, California, and Connecticut. (Countries include Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa, and Spain ... I don't think I've missed any nations, but a Scandinavian country might have snuck in while I wasn't paying attention. All the other developed countries, except for the United States, have some kind of partner recognition for same-sex pairs, roughly equivalent to Vermont's and New Jersey's civil unions, as do a handful of Latin American countries' provinces or states.)

  Connecticut's Supreme Court issued its decision about an hour ago. I haven't had a chance to read it, but I wanted to congratulate the 3.5 million residents of the state directly to my south on joining my state in treating its lesbian and gay couples as fully and honorably equal. (More info about the decision will be appearing here.)

  I do hope that the voters of California—who will have a chance on Nov. 4 to either undo or uphold their state's gender-neutral marriages—will take heart from being joined by another New England state. California's anti-marriage forces have been lying in their television ads, saying that California's marriage code will force churches to marry same-sex couples even if that's against their religious beliefs. That's just false. Nobody's hurt when the state recognizes that two women or two men can and do promise to care for each other for life—and need the legal tools to fulfill the obligations they make in those vows.
  

  Mazel tov to Connecticut! Considering the catastrophic financial headlines lately, how lovely to get some good news!

  Filed under: LGBT rights, same-sex marriage, Connecticut

About E.J. Graff

• E.J. Graff is associate director and senior researcher at Brandeis University's Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism, where she directs the Gender & Justice Project. She is a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women's Studies Research Center. As a journalist and author, her work has appeared in such venues as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy magazine, The Boston Globe, The Los Angeles Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Good Housekeeping, The Nation, The New Republic, and in more than a dozen anthologies. She collaborated on former Massachusetts Lt. Governor Evelyn Murphy's book Getting Even: Why Women Don't Get Paid Like Men--and What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book, What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, has been widely cited in legal journals, reprinted for academic use, entered as courtroom exhibits, and quoted by government policymaking bodies.

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