POLB30H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Strict Scrutiny, Intermediate Scrutiny, Suspect Classification
Document Summary
In 1993, the state supreme court of hawaii stunned the nation when it ruled that the ban on same sex marriage violated the state"s equal protection clause. The voters of the state of hawaii disagreed. They decided to amend their state constitution in order to instruct the legislator to maintain the traditional definition of marriage (a union between a man and a woman) In 2000 the state supreme court of vermont decided that homosexual couples deserved to have all of the same protections offered to straight couples through the institution of marriage but they didn"t give them the right to marry. They instituted something else, what they called civil unions. Benefits of marriage: tax benefits, access to health insurance, health proxy (decide about medical care), immigrant status. In this modern world, marriage is very much about allocations of benefits often either directly from the state or indirectly regulated from the state.
