David Orgon Coolidge was a legal scholar and director of the Marriage Law Project at the Catholic University of America, where he focused on the legal defense of traditional marriage. He contributed to The Weekly Standard between 1999 and 2001, writing about same-sex marriage debates, civil unions, and state-level marriage legislation in Vermont, Massachusetts, and California. He passed away in 2002.
IT WAS A HISTORIC MOMENT, to be sure, and carefully stage-managed for public consumption. Sunday, April 1, was the day that same-sex marriages were to become legal in the Netherlands. The occasion had to be done up right. Henk Krol, editor of Gay Krant, Amsterdam's gay newspaper, and the gay rights…
Starting July 1, any two adults not closely related by blood can enter into a "civil union" in Vermont. They must apply for a license and recruit a member of the clergy or a justice of the peace to conduct a ceremony and sign their license, whereupon the town clerk will duly register their union.
ON MARCH 7, the day of the presidential primary in California, Golden State voters will approve or reject Proposition 22, an initiative that contains just 14 words: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
What exactly had happened? This was the big question on December 20, when the Vermont supreme court issued its long-awaited ruling on same-sex "marriage" in Baker v. State. Three same-sex couples had claimed that Vermont's marriage law violated the Vermont constitution. The court did not rule on…
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