Our City by the (Chesapeake?) Bay

The year 2010 is shaping up to be one of momentous social change in the District of Columbia. Accordingly, in this edition of Free & Clear, we leave our normal focus on real estate in the nation’s capital and take a look at what has happened so far this year.

As I arrived for court this past Wednesday morning at 500 Indiana Avenue, I knew something was different. It is normal for the court entrance to be somewhat of a zoo, especially as business begins for the day. The volatile mix of defendants, witnesses, and family members lining up to clear security can erupt in an instant. But on this day, when the District Marriage Bureau began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, there was a virtual pandemonium, the likes of which I had never seen. Supporters and detractors of the new law waved signs and shouted abuse at one another, while a stepped-up police presence struggled to keep them apart. Several TV interviews were in progress outside the courthouse doors, and TV satellite vans jockeyed for position on the street.

Once inside, I noticed U.S. Marshals dressed in military fatigues, standing in groups of three on every landing. Gay couples arriving to obtain their marriage licenses must have found the federal show of force reminiscent of President Eisenhower’s use of the 101st Airborne Division to guarantee the safety of the black students who integrated Little Rock Central High School. I knew that a same-sex marriage bill had been before the City Council, but I had assumed that the combined forces of the African-American and Catholic Churches—both of which opposed it—would stop the bill in its tracks. If the bill should somehow survive the opposition of the churches, I thought, then Congress would deliver the coup de grace. But the Washington I thought I knew had changed, almost overnight.

In addition, Congress, with relatively little fanfare, repealed a 1998 law invalidating a citywide referendum approving medical marijuana. Now, with no legal obstacles, medical marijuana will be coming to D.C. in 2010; indeed, the law calls for dispensaries where patients who are prescribed the drug can legally obtain it. Apparently marijuana effectively treats a host of ailments, and the anti-marijuana lobby is probably right when it claims that medical marijuana laws are little short of full-scale legalization.

Perhaps the real significance of the gay marriage and medical marijuana laws can be found in the fact that D.C. is a federal district. The “Home Rule” period began in 1971, but Congress can still legislate for the District and veto D.C. Council bills. The advent of gay marriage and medical marijuana in D.C. therefore represents a de facto federal position on both issues; although the measures were initiated in the District and not at the behest of Congress, the federal government is not standing in the way.

A colleague of mine remarked on Wednesday that D.C. could soon become the San Francisco of the East Coast, setting example of tolerance that leads the way for social change across the country. To the extent that legal discrimination against gay couples and marijuana users in the United States may be brought to a hastier end by the actions of the D.C. Council, I think he is correct.

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