Skip to main content

California Supreme Court decides that gay people are American citizens

From BBC News:

California's top court has ruled that a state law banning marriage between same-sex couples is unconstitutional.

The state's Supreme Court said the "right to form a family relationship" applied to all Californians regardless of sexuality....

"Limiting the designation of marriage to a union 'between a man and a woman' is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute," California Chief Justice Ron George said in the written opinion.


About time.
Labels:

Comments

Waldo Lydecker's Journal said…
The California Supreme Court played the hand it was dealt, but in the process it has given John McCain a leg up in the fall. An initiative to amend the state constitution and ban same-sex marriage will qualify for the ballot in November, which means more McCain supporters will turn out- maybe even more African-American voters who will support Obama but not same-sex marriage. And you won't see Chelsea Clinton doing gay bar crawls in support, either. The Clintons will drop the gay tribe like a hot brick.
May 15, 2008 at 10:45 PM
Brian Miller said…
Don't count out the Libertarian effort, Waldo.

We worked with the Greens when I lived in California and had a number of successful rallies that got NO media coverage -- including from the gay press (and that detail really pissed me off).

One rally, made up mostly of allies, got over 1,000 people in Mountain View -- Google's hometown -- spontaneously.

There's a lot of grassroots support for marriage equality in California across political lines -- including Libertarians, Greens, independents, pissed off Democrats, and moderate Republicans (including the Reagan-appointed judges who made this decision happen).

I think the far right will find California a much tougher fight than they think -- there's a motivated, connected grassroots that will give them an unprecedented run for their money, and which has a lot of sympathetic ears in high places from major employers to educational institutions.

I also am not convinced the additional turnout will throw support, by default, to any of the old-party campaigns. If anything, it could erode McCain's support and Obama's support among pissed-off gay voters who have had enough.

If the LP runs George Phillies or another centrist, it could result in spoiling a close CA vote for either the Democrats or the Republicans, depending on who shows up and why.

This is a very exciting race!
May 16, 2008 at 12:45 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...
44 comments
Read more

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...
70 comments
Read more

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...
31 comments
Read more