美国如何将同性婚姻写入法律_时事_双语阅读-查字典英语网

美国如何将同性婚姻写入法律

To put it more simply: instead of killing each other in the streets, Americans argue about theConstitution. Divisive issues bounce back and forth between courts and streets until asettlement is reached.

说得简单点：美国人针对宪法展开争论，而不是到街头互相厮杀。引起分歧的问题在法院和坊间之间来回往复传递，直到达成解决办法。

View the history of same-sex marriage in that light. Gay couples began to seek the right tomarry as early as 1972. The Supreme Court rejected that claim as “insubstantial. But the mereclaim began to put a human face on a minority that had been historically invisible. Simply byasking the question, gays and lesbians showed themselves as ordinary people who wantedhomes and families of their own.

从这个角度来看美国同性婚姻的历史。早在1972年，就有同性恋人寻求结婚的权利。美国最高法院以不具有实质性(insubstantial)为由驳回这类主张。但这些主张开始让这个历史上隐形的少数群体露出了人的面目。仅仅通过发出疑问，同性恋群体表明了他们也是普通人，渴望拥有自己的住房和家庭。

By the 1990s, gay claimants convinced the Hawaii Supreme Court that the claim wassubstantial indeed. One state was all it took to begin the debate. Congress passed the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act; Hawaii voters overturned their court. But these setbacks onlymade the idea of same-sex marriage more real. Some states tried to still the demand byenacting “civil union laws (later described by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg as “skim-milkmarriage), which had the same effect. But in 2003, the highly respected Supreme JudicialCourt of Massachusetts held that marriage, not a substitute, was the right of every adult.