idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
lolgaxe wrote:
Palpitus1 wrote:
It's remarkable that the actual watershed national elections results isn't a political office, but rather allowing gay marriage and weed-smoking, by popular vote (at least until the Federal Government destroys them).
Hell, longer than that. Social issues have been carrying elections for a really, really long time. But especially since the party restructuring during the Civil Rights Movement.
Sure, you folk can easily dismiss this, because you have no clue about US legal history. My point wasn't about "carrying elections", since both Romney and Obama are almost equally against legal weed and legal gay marriage. My point was that these two priviledges were approved by a majority of the population in several particular states.
It took LBJ and Congress to enact the Civil Rights Act. It took the Supreme Court to uphold abortion rights. No President or court or Congress has had an inkling to provide gays with marriage, or marijuana with legality (okay, on the latter, it was only illegal 20th Century...).
And yes, it is remarkable even if I've been paying attention the last decade. In the last decade every popular Proposition for gay marriage and for legal marijuana was shot down. In fact, there was a big movement for other state ballots to strictly define marriage as between a man and a woman, which voters approved. Voters not only approved gays marrying, and in at least one state I can't remember denied one of those bills to define man-woman marriage, but they also approved legal marijuana. Medicinal marijuana is already legal in 18 states. Gay marriage is legal in nine states.
This legalization has nothing to do with the earlier civil rights gains people have cited. Or at the very least, they only can be compared to very early advocation. The Federal Government declares marijuana a prohibited substance, and as Obama has shown, will heavily prosecute offenders. The Supreme Court has never been presented a case. Gay marriage is legal in many states, yet President Obama has not made a real effort to repeal Defense of Marriage Acts, which allows states not allowing it to not recognizing incoming couples. Federal Law, which permits 1000 or more legal rights/priviledges to same-sex married couples, does not permit one to same-sex spouses/couples. The Supreme Court, AFAIK, has not taken a case on this.
This is utterly unlike the Civil Rights era, at least as far as the final resolution. No US courts (except for California) have intervented. No President or Congress has intervened. It's now and until (when?) in individual states' hands to declare themselves opposed to the Federal Government's position of gay marriage not being recognized, and marijuana not being a legal product.
Do any of you actually think the Democratic Party currently advocates a "Legal Marijuana" or "Gay Marriage=Straight Marriage" position? How utterly naive are you? The times of stalwart civil rights advocaters like LBJ and RFK and JFK are gone. The times of stalwart rights agents of the court such as Marshall, Brandeis, Byron are gone (not only that they don't currently in part exist, but because they as a whole refuse to adjudicate on a case).
The Federal Government is way behind the population on these issues.