Partly, this is a response to another diary.
Partly, this is to give GLBTQI folks and our allies the right arms to deal with some of the ignorance and bigotry we're seeing.
Let's start with one of our country's founding documents, the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
-Declaration of Independence, 1776
I'd like in on that "pursuit of Happiness" part. Although history tells us that the Founding Fathers weren't exactly practicing what they preached, that doesn't make them wrong on the point that all persons are created equal.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
-U.S. Constitution, Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1, 1868
Also known as "the Equal Protection Clause", this demands that states grant the same rights to all persons who are similarly situated. In other words, states cannot grant rights to one class of citizens but not another class who are otherwise similar. The rights must be granted to all, or to none. This is perhaps most famously stated as...
Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.
-Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, Brown vs. Board of Education, 1954
http://www.jsonline.com/...
As much as some people would like to think granting "civil unions" to GLBT people and reserving "marriage" for heterosexual couples, this runs afoul of Brown v. Board of Education principle that separate but equal is inherently unequal. Passing an additional 1043 federal laws and innumerable state and local laws to grant the same rights and privileges to same-sex "civil unions" as are currently granted by marriage is not only utterly impractical, it'd be struck by the courts the moment anyone--on the right or the left--challenged it.
The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men. Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man", fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.
-Chief Justice Earl Warren, U.S. Supreme Court, Loving v. Virginia, 1967
http://www.multiracial.com/...
For those who argue marriage is a privilege, not a right, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said otherwise. According to the U.S. Supreme Court, marriage is a right, not a privilege. Loving is not the only Supreme Court decision to uphold this principle. There are several others, including Supreme Court cases affirming the right of prisoners to marry. Most--if not all--of those other cases reaffirmed the fundamental right to marry.
Central both to the idea of the rule of law and to our own Constitution's guarantee of equal protection is the principle that government and each of its parts remain open on impartial terms to all who seek its assistance. "Equal protection of the laws is not achieved through indiscriminate imposition of inequalities." Respect for this principle explains why laws singling out a certain class of citizens for disfavored legal status or general hardships are rare. A law declaring that in general it shall be more difficult for one group of citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government is itself a denial of equal protection of the laws in the most literal sense. "The guaranty of 'equal protection of the laws is a pledge of the protection of equal laws.'"
-Justice Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court, Romer v. Evans, 1995
http://www.law.umkc.edu/...
Unfortunately, Romer often gets overlooked. What it says, however, is thunderous, all the more surprising that Justice Kennedy--a swing vote--wrote it. This was the case that overturned Colorado's Amendment 2, passed in 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected President of the United States. The circumstances are eerily familiar, aren't they?
A second and related point is that laws of the kind now before us raise the inevitable inference that the disadvantage imposed is born of animosity toward the class of persons affected. "If the constitutional conception of 'equal protection of the laws' means anything, it must at the very least mean that a bare . . . desire to harm a politically unpopular group cannot constitute a legitimate governmental interest." Even laws enacted for broad and ambitious purposes often can be explained by reference to legitimate public policies which justify the incidental disadvantages they impose on certain persons. Amendment 2, however, in making a general announcement that gays and lesbians shall not have any particular protections from the law, inflicts on them immediate, continuing, and real injuries that outrun and belie any legitimate justifications that may be claimed for it. We conclude that, in addition to the far-reaching deficiencies of Amendment 2 that we have noted, the principles it offends, in another sense, are conventional and venerable; a law must bear a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose, and Amendment 2 does not.
Furthermore, Justice Kennedy ruled out "pure animus" as one reason to exclude GLBT people from the protections afforded by the government. In addition, he wrote, laws must have some legitimate reason--a reason that goes beyond "animosity".
That view was reaffirmed in Lawrence v. Texas:
In his dissenting opinion in Bowers Justice Stevens concluded that (1) the fact a State’s governing majority has traditionally viewed a particular practice as immoral is not a sufficient reason for upholding a law prohibiting the practice, and (2) individual decisions concerning the intimacies of physical relationships, even when not intended to produce offspring, are a form of "liberty" protected by due process.
Justice Stevens' analysis, in our view, should have been controlling in Bowers and should control here.
Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precendent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.
-Justice Anthony Kennedy, U.S. Supreme Court, Lawrence v. Texas, 2003
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/...