(CNN) — California’s Supreme Court said Wednesday that it will hear the appeal of a challenge to Proposition 8, a voter-approved measure outlawing gay marriage.
California’s voter-approved measure banning gay marriage has sparked protests throughout the state.
In a written statement, the court said it will not block the implementation or enforcement of the law in the meantime.
Proposition 8 passed with about 52.5 percent of the vote, making California one of several states to ban gay marriage in the November 4 elections.
But unlike the other states, California had already been issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples since May, after a state Supreme Court ruling legalized the unions.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights filed legal challenges to the vote, asking the high court to rule the ballot-initiative process was “improperly used” to strip away a right protected by the state constitution.
The court said arguments in the case could be heard as early as March.
In its May 15 ruling legalizing gay marriage in California, the justices seemed to signal that a ballot initiative like Proposition 8 might not be enough to change the underlying constitutional issues of the case in the court’s eyes.
The ruling said the right to marry is among a set of basic human rights “so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process.”
In the hours after the proposition’s apparent passage, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles and other cities across California in protest.
Observances in support of gay marriage were held in cities across the country Saturday.
It’s been more than two weeks since the election, and still no one has been able to tell me why the majority should be able to suppress the rights of the minority, when both the California and US Constitutions are supposed to be designed to protect the rights of all people, both majority and minority.
I think, however, that even if the California Supreme Court overturns Prop 8 as an unlawful constitutional revision, we won’t have heard the last of this issue; whether it goes back in front of the legislature to be voted on before going back on the ballot a third time, or whether it gets appealed to the US Supreme Court, this issue is not going to go away anytime soon.
And that’s a good thing. Issues like this need to remain as visible as possible until all people in the United States are affording the same rights and privileges.
Opponents of a measure that banned gay marriage in California took their outrage to the spiritual hub of Mormonism on Friday.
More than 3,000 people swarmed downtown Salt Lake City to march past the LDS temple and church headquarters, protesting Mormon involvement in the campaign for California’s Proposition 8. The measure, which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, passed this week.
A sea of signs in City Creek Park, where the march began, screamed out messages including, “I didn’t vote on your marriage,” “Mormons once persecuted . . . Now persecutors,” and “Jesus said love everyone.” Others read, “Proud of my two moms” and “Protect traditional marriage. Ban divorce.”
Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson and three openly gay state legislators, Sen. Scott McCoy and Reps. Jackie Biskupski and Christine Johnson, spoke out in support. At one point, the crowd took up the mantra made famous by the country’s new president-elect: “Yes, we can!”
Then, the masses headed west, weaving between cars, waving at those who watched from windows in the LDS Church Office Building and shouting chants such as: “What do we want? Equality! When do we want it? Now!”
The comments after the article can be very telling. One commenter asked:
What’s wrong with calling marriage and civil unions just that ?? Why do we have to use the word marriage in both cases when most feel that marriage is between husband and wife ??
Simplistic yes — but that’s the way that I want it and most of the Calif. voters feel the same way — there is a differance.
The problem with maintaining the fiction of “marriage” and “civil unions” comes down to the segregationist concept of “separate but equal”; which as was proven time and time again during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was never equal.
I can understand people having moral/religious qualms against marriage between two people of the same sex, but for me personally it’s about NOT legislating and especially not Constitutionalizing morality. Morality comes from within. It should not be imposed on others.
No one has ever been able to give me a rational non-religious reason for why gay marriage should be banned; no one has been able to tell me how allowing two men or two women to get married to each other damages their own marriage to the point that it needs to be “protected” by law.
If someone can give me a coherent argument on that side, maybe I’ll reconsider; but until then, personally, I must choose to support equal rights for everyone, regardless of race, creed, religion or sexual orientation.
Other people are calling for the revocation of the Church’s tax-exempt status.
The problem there is that the LDS Church is well within its rights to speak out on socio-political issues.
501(c)(3) prohibitions state that a church may not make statements that directly support or oppose a candidate or slate of candidates in a “sermon, church bulletin, on a church website or in an editorial in a church publication.” The bottom line is that § 501(c)(3) prohibits charities—including houses of worship—from endorsing or opposing candidates “either expressly or by implication.”
However, this does not mean that church leaders are not permitted to voice their opinions regarding important socio-political matters that could have profound impact on their congregations. Church leaders have always been free to speak out on moral and ethical issues at stake in pending legislation or public referenda. They may take stands on political issues such as abortion, gay rights, gun control, and health care, to name a few.
Taking away the Church’s tax-exempt status could have a profoundly negative impact on other tax-exempt organizations, such as the American Cancer Society, the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR), and a host of other organizations’ ability to lobby Congress or support ballot initiatives to increase funding for research.
The Church’s position will never be changed by direct attacks; this will only bolster their opinions. What needs to happen is for active members who disagree with the Church’s position to speak up, rationally and calmly and over and over and over again. Challenge the Church to change from within.
Elsewhere, the focus should be on challenging the legality of Proposition 8 itself in the Courts. Does it constitute a Constitutional revision (which requires approval of both houses of the California State Legislature) rather than an amendment? Does it put the California Constitution into direct conflict itself, by banning same sex marriage, when the Courts have ruled that bans on same sex marriage violate the equal protection clause?
There have also been calls to boycott Utah … I need to think about this one a bit more, but part of me says that rather than boycotting Utah, gay rights activists should start organizing trips to Utah. Most Utahns are isolationists already. Boycotting may just give them a sense of relief. Instead more gay people should travel to Utah, move to Utah, and keep the issue front-and-center in Utah.
And to think I was worried about how I’d spend my post-election blog time.
The drive to defeat Prop 8 isn’t completely dead yet … seems the proponents of Prop 8 didn’t get legislative approval for a Constitutional revision before placing the prop on the ballot; so it’s possible that Prop 8 constitutes an unlawful amendment.
After a heated, divisive campaign fueled by a record $73 million of spending, California voters have approved Proposition 8, which would change the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Opponents promptly filed suit to try to block the measure from taking effect.
With 96 percent of the vote counted, Prop. 8 was winning by a decisive 400,000-vote margin, 52.2 percent to 47.8 percent. It piled up huge margins in the Central Valley and carried some Democratic strongholds such as Los Angeles County. The measure lost in every Bay Area county but Solano.
As the vote counting continued this morning, opponents of Prop. 8 filed a lawsuit directly with the state Supreme Court - whose May 15 ruling legalized same-sex marriage - asking the justices to overturn the measure.
The suit argued that Prop. 8 would change the California Constitution in such fundamental ways - taking important rights away from a minority group - that it amounted to a constitutional revision, which requires approval by the Legislature before being submitted to the voters. The case was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Lamda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.
The same groups asked the court before the election to remove Prop. 8 from the ballot on those grounds. The justices refused, but left the door open for a post-election challenge.
“A major purpose of the Constitution is to protect minorities from majorities,” said Elizabeth Gill, an ACLU lawyer. “Because changing that principle is a fundamental change to the organizing principles of the Constitution itself, only the Legislature can initiate such revisions.”
Marriage should be for everyone … nobody has been able to give me a coherent argument based on legal (not religious) grounds as to why discrimination should be written into a state’s Constitution.
I’m tempted to say that I refuse to get married again unless/until all people have the right to get married to the person of their choice, regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation. I refuse to say sexual preference, because I knew several gay people in the Bay Area who would have preferred to be heterosexual rather than gay.
Well, as many of my friends used to say, “Never straight, always gaily forward!” and “It’s not over until the bulldyke sings.”
» by flahute in: Music on August 20th, 2008 at 13:00:14 UTC |
TIM ARMSTRONG - INTO ACTION
(featuring Skye Sweetnam)
Let’s get moving into action
Let’s get moving into action
If your life’s too slow, no satisfaction
Find something out there, there’s an attraction
If you hesitate now, that’s a subtraction
So, let’s get moving girl into action
We take the 43 bus, we got no plans
The girl in the miniskirt, her name’s Suzanne, right
The one with in high heel boots is Sharon
And Karen is the one with the blonde wig on
And with a bullet, man, we’re going number one
And we don’t need any money to have any fun
Let’s get moving into action
Let’s get moving into action
If your life’s too slow, no satisfaction
Find something out there, there’s an attraction
If you hesitate now, that’s a subtraction
So, let’s get moving girl into action
We take the Trans-Bay Tube on the Richmond line
Leave S.F. at eight, East Bay by nine
We may run out of money tonight never out of time
Harmon street we kick, it going to Adeline
It’s anybody’s guess how late were gonna run
We go all night alright to midnight just begun
Let’s get moving into action
Let’s get moving into action
If your life’s too slow, no satisfaction
Find something out there, there’s an attraction
If you hesitate now, that’s a subtraction
So, let’s get moving girl into action
Well when we showed up on the scene, we tried to warn them
That your days were over and the ship was sunken
Respect to New York, respect to London
But we’re from California and our State is Golden
We’re gonna dig dig dig in deep hold our sacred ground
When the music come playing then you jump up, jump down
If you hook up the speakers, man, we’ll bring the sound
And the music will be heard from miles and miles around
We got songs of redemption, songs of war
We got songs like this that can pack the dance floor
Let’s get moving into action
Let’s get moving into action
If your life’s too slow, no satisfaction
Find something out there, there’s an attraction
If you hesitate now, that’s a subtraction
So, let’s get moving girl into action
Morning Edition, June 16, 2008 · As gay couples in California head to the courthouse starting Monday to get legally married, there are signs of a coming storm. Two titanic legal principles are crashing on the steps of the church, synagogue and mosque: equal treatment for same-sex couples on the one hand, and the freedom to exercise religious beliefs on the other.
The collision that will play out over the next few years will be filled with pathos on both sides.
As many of my regular readers know, before I moved to Utah, I lived in San Francisco for many, many years, and Santa Cruz prior to that. Needless to say, having spent nearly 2 decades in Northern California, the issue of gay rights has had a lot of visibility in my life … so to me, the recent California Supreme Court decision overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage prompted thoughts of “It’s about freakin’ time!”
I’ve always felt that it was just plain wrong to deny gay couples involved in a committed long-term and loving relationship the same basic rights that a violent, abusive husband has simply by virtue that his wife hasn’t yet filed for divorce.
And seriously, how does Adam & Steve getting married have a negative impact on Adam & Eve’s marriage?
Lesbian rights activists Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 84, were the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license in San Francisco on Monday, with Mayor Gavin Newsom presiding over their wedding ceremony.
“This is an extraordinary moment in history,” Newsom told a cheering, standing-room-only crowd at City Hall. “I think today, marriage as an institution has been strengthened.”
But this morning, I listened to the above linked (and excerpted) story on NPR’s Morning Edition … and it got me thinking about some of the other involved issues tied to gay marriage … and religious freedom.
In the story, a lesbian couple wished to have their (New Jersey) civil union ceremony performed in a Pavilion owned by a Methodist retreat center, formally known as the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association. The Methodist group gave them permission to have their ceremony anywhere on the property except those areas used for religious purposes by the group.
The couple filed an anti-discrimination suit. The NPR story continues:
The Methodist organization responded that it was their property, and the First Amendment protects their right to practice their faith without government intrusion. But Lustberg countered that the pavilion is open to everyone — and therefore the group could no more refuse to accommodate the lesbians than a restaurant owner could refuse to serve a black man. That argument carried the day. The state revoked the organization’s tax exemption for the pavilion area. Hoffman figures they will lose $20,000.
Now, with the help of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a Christian legal firm, Hoffman is appealing the case to state court. He says religious freedom itself is in jeopardy.
“And that potentially affects every religious organization in America, not just Christian organizations, but every religious organization. And I get calls from Jewish rabbis who are equally concerned — people from across the spectrum who think it’s a battle worth fighting. And we agree,” Hoffman says.
Now, I am hardly the most religious person in the world, but I do believe that any person should be able to practice the religion of their choice … and in this particular case, I happen to agree with Reverend Hoffman; especially since the group didn’t tell the couple they couldn’t have their ceremony on the property at all, just not within structures used for religious purposes by the group.
A case like this, carried to its extreme, could mean that the the Catholic Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (and everyone else) could be forced to allow gay couples to hold their civil ceremonies (and/or marriages, in those states which currently or will ultimately allow them) on, and within Church property.
While part of me finds the idea of the Mormons being forced to allow gay weddings amusing, not only on Temple Square but within the Temple itself, a far bigger part of me feels that the members of a church should be allowed to worship as they please, and that churches should be able to disallow activity on their property that goes against their core beliefs.
I don’t equate a church refusing to allow a gay couple to “marry” on church property because it’s against their religious beliefs, with a restaurant owner refusing to serve a person simply based on the color of their skin … primarily because owning a business isn’t protected as free speech or freedom of religion, as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Elsewhere in the overall piece is a story about a wedding photographer who was sued for discrimination because his business indicated that they would not photograph same-sex marriages because it goes against the owners’ religious beliefs.
This is a little closer to the restaurant analogy … but it’s still an iffy situation.
I’m afraid that these kinds of legal battles may lead to a backlash against the gay and lesbian community; that groups like the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association will close up their property to everyone, and only allow it to be used for religious purposes. I’m afraid that more states; less enlightened states, will put amendments banning gay marriage into their constitutions.
I’m afraid that society, while making making some huge steps forward right now, will get pushed back even further …
BRANDON, South Dakota (CNN) — Sen. Hillary Clinton said Friday that she regretted comments that evoked the June 1968 assassination of Robert Kennedy as part of her explanation for why she was staying in the presidential race late into the primary season.
Earlier Friday afternoon, she told the editorial board of the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus Leader that “My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it,” she said.
Clinton complained that “people have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa” and said that position “historically … makes no sense.”
Later at an event in Brandon, South Dakota, she said, “Earlier today, I was discussing the Democratic primary history and in the course of that discussion mentioned the campaigns that both my husband and Sen. Kennedy waged in California in June in 1992 and 1968, and I was referencing those to make the point that we have had nominating primary contests that go into June. That’s an historic fact.”
Senator Clinton —
One of the reasons why earlier nominations weren’t wrapped up until June is because many of the larger states (like California) didn’t hold their primaries until June … but that changed this year with about half of the states holding their primaries on Super Tuesday back in February.
When you have large states holding off until the end of the primary season to cast their ballots, it’s definitely possible that the nomination won’t be wrapped up until later in the year. But this year, it essentially became mathematically impossible for you to get the nomination several weeks ago.
This is one of the reasons why people have been pushing for you to drop out of the race … Obama has the momentum and has had for a long time. You are a powerful woman, and would make a formidable Senate Majority leader, but despite winning as many votes and delegates as you have, you are far too divisive to truly be successful in the general election against John McCain.
It’s time to bow out … gracefully. There is a place for you in government, but not in the White House.
Please, Hillary … for the sake of the Party, please bow out.
(CNN) — In a much-anticipated 4-3 ruling issued Thursday, the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional
The ruling clears the way for the state to become the second to legalize same-sex marriage.
Several gay and lesbian couples — along with the city of San Francisco and gay rights groups — had sued, saying they were victims of unlawful discrimination.
A lower court ruled San Francisco acted unlawfully in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but Thursday’s ruling overturned that decision.
“In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” the court said in the 120-page ruling, “and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.
“We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”
I’ve always felt that it was just plain wrong to deny gay couples involved in a committed long-term and loving relationship the same basic rights that a violent, abusive husband has simply by virtue that his wife hasn’t yet filed for divorce.
… an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.
@ashbuckles WPTouch is just a WordPress plugin to format a WP blog for viewing on an iPhone. WordPress has a app to post in the App Store. in reply to ashbuckles2 hrs ago
