Today's ruling by the District of Columbia's highest court was a landmark holding, making clear for now and forever more that as long as the DC Council broadly prohibits any form of discrimination in the District of Columbia, no majority group of citizens can impose this discrimination on any minority. This decision upholds DC's fabled position as one of the most free, most tolerant, most fair jurisdictions in the country.

The majority opinion correctly found that because the virtually identical DC Council who drafted the Charter Amendments creating the initiative and referendum rights also drafted the Human Rights Act and the Human Rights limitations on these initiatives and referenda in the same general time-period, the DC Council must have intended all of these laws to function coherently together as they have for the last 30 years. And while the complicated textual analysis of the interplay among the Home Rule Act, the Charter Amendments, and the implementation of those amendments in 1977-78 is open to some debate (and a 5-4 decision), we should all recognize there was unanimity among every single judge on the Court that denying gay and lesbian people the right to marry is invidious discrimination in violation of District of Columbia Law and DC's Human Rights Act.

As the attorney representing Gertrude Stein at the court challenge on the initial Jackson referendum, I am gratified that Stein could play such a pivotal role as the first community organization on the scene in court to defend the freedoms of our community. Our fight before the DC Board of Elections and the DC Superior Court led to the first court decision in the District to overrule the Dean decision and recognize not only the legal right of gay and lesbian people to marry, but also the prohibition on putting our civil rights to a vote. That decision was ultimately upheld today. Stein helped draft the legislation, we defended it in administrative proceedings, and we defended it in court. And in protecting the rights of gay and lesbian people in DC, Gertrude Stein played a vital role in protecting the rights of all DC citizens today, by enshrining into DC law the proposition that no one's civil rights should ever be put to a vote.