Word: gays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Just as critically, there are key legal differences. Unlike gay marriage, which seemed to burst upon the scene all at once when Massachusetts Supreme Court made it legal, courts began slowly to recognize gay rights as far back as 1985. Several states - including California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, and New York - already expressly forbid discrimination against gays seeking to adopt. A handful of other states, even without specific legislation, allow gay adoption...
Supporters of a traditional definition of marriage have pushed for statewide votes in more than 30 states, and gay marriage has survived in none of them. Those bans, together with existing legislation, make gay marriage expressly illegal in 45 states. And while the outcome of the legal challenges to California's recent vote to ban gay marriage will be watched closely, even gay rights activists say the momentum is draining from the gay marriage fight...
...Iowa is the only state in the country where we have an open marriage case pending before a court," Chrisler said. (The Iowa high court will hear oral arguments in December.) "So we expect the battle to move now to issues like gay adoption and foster parenting, There isn't anywhere left for the other side to go on marriage." (See a video from a gay wedding...
...despite the similarities in tactics, the fight over gay adoption won't necessarily be a repeat of the anti-gay-marriage campaign. Chrisler and others contend that the arguments against gay adoption will be more difficult to make than those against gay marriage. "It's not nearly as divisive an issue as the definition of marriage," she says. "For the most part, people think of adoption and foster-parenting as children's issues. What's best for the child...
What's more, even states that prohibit gay adoptions have a very hard time refusing to recognize adoptions that are done in other states. Unlike marriage licenses, which are administrative in nature and subject to less powerful constitutional protection from state to state, an adoption takes effect by an explicit ruling by a judge. Adoption rulings are, therefore, the kinds of decisions that the U.S. Constitution's Full Faith and Credit Clause was designed to protect across state borders...