Good afternoon. I am the directors. It is a great pleasure and honor to moderate this panel. And really it is a celebration is a wonderful new book. But we are going to do this afternoon is have some presentations and responses to the book and then open up for question and discussion. And we have assembled a stellar panel of the people who are just the right people to undertake this discussion. They will speak in the order that we have determined, but it will begin with a brief presentation of the books and its main issues in history. She is the director of the center for gender and sexuality off which is wonderful institution that we are happy to collaborate with, and she is the author of wedlock the perils of Marriage Equality. Catherine has been working on marriage, gender justice, transitional justice, issues of gender and race in law, legal theorist, and academic, and activist, a public intellectual an amazing human being. Ibeing. I am just so happy to be celebrating her this afte
Editorial more and reward and in the end instead of six hours we went close to ten hours. You can watch this and other programs online at booktv. Org. Good afternoon. I am the director of the institute for research on women, gender and sensuality and it is a great pleasure and great honor to be used this afternoon to moderate this panel and the celebration of a wonderful new book, a book on marriage eat quality by catherine frankie. What we are going to do this the afternoon is have some presentations and responses to the book and then open up for questions and discussion. We have assembled a stellar panel of the people who are just the right people to undertake this discussion and introduce them all briefly altogether and they will speak in deep water that we determined. It is all going to begin with a presentation of the book end its main issues of history by catherine frankie. She is the professor of law, director of the center for gender and sexual along which is a wonderful instit
[cheers and applause] i will hasten to add, it is a question and a responsibility for all of us. And a hard choice, and a very hard choice. And it is a very hard choice, but i think all of us have some hard choices about what kind of citizens were going to be, what were going to ask of our leaders and also what well ask of ourselves, and what has always made us strong as americans goes back to that incredibly astute observation of detocqueville when he tried to understand what the country was about and looked at our organization and the democracy and the institutions we were building. He said it came down to the habits of our heart. And i think we have to ask yourselves what it means today to be an american in the 21st 21st century and what we expect from each other, what we expect from our government, what we expect from our businesses, our academic institutions, because i am more optimistic and confident about whatunder potential is, but i know we have some hard choices to make to tr
Passage. We have a rare moment for the Senate Foreign Relation Committee and the senate as a whole to demonstrate this. And coming together to demonstrates our ability to give constructive input on one of the most Important National Security Issues of the day and strain our divisive influences in this body and demonstrate our ability to overcome them and show the relevance and Work Together to come together in the best interest of our nation. With that, madam president , i yield the floor. Next, the Supreme Court Court Hears Oral Argument in several samesex marriage cases. Then we open it up to you and later a debate on samesex marriage on todays washington journal. Throughout the day we have been seeing comments from a number viewers. This one from maxwell who says it has been legal in the uk for a while and their society is still entact and no one elses marriages have been ruined. Get the government out of marriage all together. Facebook. Com cspan. And on twitter jennifer who covere
Follows on individuals and families couldntntravenes the basic constitutional equivalent to dignity. Abiding purpose of the 14th amendment is to preclude relegating classes of persons to secondtier status. What do you do with the windsor case where the court stressed the federal government a stark deference to states when it comes to matter of domestic relations . States do have primecy over domestic relations except that their laws must respect the Constitutional Rights of persons. Windsor couldnt have been clearer about that. Here we have a whole class of people who are denied the equal right to be able to join in the very extensive Government Institution that provides protection for families. You say join in the institution. The argument on the other side is that theyre seeking to rere redefine the institution. Every definition i looked up prior to about a dozen years ago defined marriage as a unity between a man and a woman as husband and wife. Obviously if you succeed, that core d