Fresh Air, Raphael Lewis and David Moats

By: Terry Gross

Journalist Raphael Lewis and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Moats on this edition of Fresh Air. Lewis is the Boston Globe's State House reporter. He'll discuss the ruling by the Massachusetts high court yesterday that gay couples in Massachusetts will be accorded full equal marriage rights rather than civil unions. The ruling is a clarification of the court's November decision that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. The State Senate asked for clarification on the decision because they felt it was worded vaguely. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Moats is the Editorial Page Editor of the Rutland Herald in Vermont, where he won that paper's first Pulitzer for his series of editorials in support of same-sex unions. He's the author of the new book Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage. Vermont became the first state in the country to make civil unions legal for gay and lesbian couples. In 1999 the State Supreme Court ruled that gay couples were due the legal rights of marriage, and told the State Legislature to decide how best to do that. The Legislature then came up with the concept of "civil union" providing gay partners inheritance and hospital-visitation rights, but stopped short of recognizing the partnerships as equivalents of marriage. (Broadcast Date: February 5, 2004)Want more Fresh Air?

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