The two decisions that the US Supreme Court has handed down today are complex and nuanced and are almost definitely likely to lead to a lot more litigation, but at their most basic they count as a win for lgbt rights.
The key win was in the Defence of Marriage case where, essentially, the Court said that you have to treat same sex couples equally with opposite sex ones. In the second case, on California's Proposition 8, which was a statewide referendum on same sex marriage that was won by opponents of lgbt rights, and which was then struck down by the courts, the issue was decided on technical grounds of the standing of the people involved. As I understand it, the California state government, very rightly declined to defend the verdict in the referendum because it was unfair and unequal, even if narrowly won by a majority and part of the job of governments is to defend minority rights when they have justice on their side. Since the state government refused to support the Prop 8 verdict in court, the people who had drafted it and are against lgbt rights, undertook to do so and lost in court. But who are these people and what gives them the right to agitate on something that affects lgbt people but not them? The Supreme Court essentially said these people have no standing in the case, and dismissed it on those grounds, allowing the lower court verdict, which struck down Prop 8 and would allow same sex marriages to take place, to go ahead as the law. I am simplifying wildly here, of course, and may have got things wrong and this is certainly not the end of the court battles. But if what I have understood is correct, the Supreme Court of the US basically said that lgbt people must be treated the same as straight people and that allowing lgbt people rights does not negatively affect the rights of straight people. These are two crucial points that are at the heart of what we are fighting for and have argued in the Supreme Court in India, so let us hope our Court takes note. Vikram
