No appeals for OR and PA, bringing total to 19 + 1

Pennsylvani's governor has released a statement saying that he will not appeal the court's decision to overturn his state's ban on gay marriage.

It has also been reported that Oregon also will not appeal.   This means that marriage equality is now fully legal in 19 states plus the District of Columbia.   And some 7 other states where the laws have been overtured but are in various stages of appeal.

With this momentum, it's possible that the Supreme Court could just let all these decisions stand by refusing to hear the appeals.   Let's hope they don't go that route.  It would be much better to have them make a clear, definitive decision.

Justice Antonin Scalia must be apoplectic.   In fact, his dissent in the DOMA case was dripping with rage and scorn.   And now seven or eight judges have cited his dissent in DOMA and also in Lawrence v Texas, turning his reasoning around to support their decision rather than refute it, as Scalia would have it.

Scalia's Lawrence argument was that overturning sodomy laws opens the door to courts deciding that being morally offensive to a majority of people is not sufficient reason to ban something -- and he specifically predicted that this would lead to gay marriage.  And this is exactly the reasoning that some judges used in overturning the bans:   that moral disapproval is not enough of reason to deny people equal protection under the law.  In his DOMA dissent, Scalia just ranted a lot;  I'm not sure what his legal point was.    Either way, he's on the losing side.

Ralph

PS:  Late news on Thursday:    plaintiffs have challenged the ban on same-sex marriage in South Dakota, leaving North Dakota as the only state that does not have a challenge.   So there are lots more court hearings coming up.