Standing and the Prop 8 Decision

No one, no indi­vid­ual or group, can show that they’re harmed by per­mit­ting gay men and women to marry, while those cou­ples can eas­ily show they’re harmed by pro­hibit­ing their mar­riage. You often hear argu­ments tossed out of the form “how does two men/women mar­ry­ing hurt you?” as if that ques­tion is sup­posed to incline you to sup­port or per­mit gay mar­riage based on a min­i­mal­ist “it’s none of my busi­ness” ethic. And some­times that feels a lit­tle unsat­is­fy­ing, because “it doesn’t hurt any­body” is a pretty thin grounds for sub­stan­tive accep­tance and equality.

But that’s not what it’s for. In a very real sense, it’s about estab­lish­ing whether or not some­one has the right to speak for or against a legal deci­sion. And that, ulti­mately, is how the law is shaped.

 

The full post on SnarkMarket has a great explanation of why this concept is so important.