After a busy IETF meeting and a nice few days off in Bruges and Brussels (photos forthcoming, when I get time to sort through them), and a break from both news and blogging (I’ve written somewhere in these pages about being out of touch with the news when I’m travelling), I have a few moments to write. I thought I’d mention what was one of the most significant news items I missed last week:
A U.S. District Court has tossed out Proposition 8, that vile, homophobic ban on same-sex marriage in California.
Proposition 8 cannot withstand any level of scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause,wrote Judge Walker.Excluding same-sex couples from marriage is simply not rationally related to a legitimate state interest.
Indeed, and well said. And one has to laugh at things like this:
But Andrew Pugno, a lawyer for the defense, said Proposition 8 had nothing to do with discrimination, but rather with the will of California voters who
simply wished to preserve the historic definition of marriage.
The other side’s attack upon their good will and motives is lamentable and preposterous,Mr. Pugno said in a statement.
Preposterous? Right, they really just want an old-married-couples’ club. They don’t want those people
to be able to join, but that’s not discrimination, not at all. Oy.
Nothing is settled yet, of course; this will clearly be appealed. The Ninth Circuit will have to weigh in — they’ll almost certainly uphold this decision. And then it’ll go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Maybe we can hope for a Scalia resignation before that happens.
Update, 19 Aug: The delays continue. Here is Thom’s blog post (see his comment to this entry) from yesterday.
So, what was I doing on Monday, the day the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals denied my right — you may argue that it merely delayed it, again, but the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., accurately noted thata right delayed is a right denied— to marry the man I love, the man with whom I’ve spent the past seven years, and the man I intend to be with until the day one of us stops breathing? What sinful, un-American civilization-destroying immorality was I indulging the day our hopes were dashed again?
Go read the whole thing.
3 comments:
I've always thought that Prop 8 should have read:
"Marriage means one man, one woman, one time, one exit."
I think that would make many of the supporters rethink their positions.
It is rather astonishing that we have accessed the red planet Mares and yet struggling with some basic rights like “same sex marriage”?!
Jeff and I were among the first ten couples in line at City Hall Thursday to get a marriage license. We're planning to be back there Wednesday at 5 to try again. We've been getting a lot of press attention: we were interviewed in our home by the local NBC and FOX affiliates for stories they ran before and after the ruling about the stay, and were interviewed in person at City Hall by more television, radio and print journalists than we can recall, and have seen and heard ourselves on most of the local stations. Some friends said they saw us on the news in Washington, DC, and apparently we were also in a national ABC News story.
Our picture was on the cover of the local San Francisco Examiner and Contra Costa Times yesterday. I also briefly had a quote in the New York Times, but it was cut in successive versions of the story.
Jeff even was quoted in a CBN (Christian Broadcasting Network, the ones responsible for the 700 Club) piece, and I have to say that they treated it fairly evenhandedly with the exception of calling Justice Walker, "the gay judge."
With the media, Jeff and I are just trying to put some faces to the story, showing people that we're not marriage equality activists but just two relatively normal and harmless-looking :-) guys, together for seven years, who just want to be able to marry and to be full citizens of this country.
Post a Comment