My state... and proud of it.
Mar. 14th, 2005 09:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumAs of right now, Calif. has no legal way to ban marriage between two persons.
Gavin Newsome is justified.
I knew the court would throw out the marriages he issued licenses for, they had to, because as Mayor he doesn't get to set aside laws he dislikes.
But he also set the stage for the lawsuit, which let a judge look at the law on it merits, and declare it has none.
In his ruling, Judge Kramer said creating benefits for same-sex couples, such as pension rights, was not sufficient.
"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts: separate but equal," he wrote. Opponents of gay marriage, and the main presidential candidates in last year's election, said they favoured giving gay couples equal rights, while insisting marriage should be between heterosexuals.
"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Judge Kramer wrote.
"The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional." (from The Guardian)
He also said, "California's enactment of rights for same-sex couples belies any argument that the state would have a legitimate interest in denying marriage in order to preclude same-sex couples from acquiring some marital right that might somehow be inappropriate for them to have,"
When the people who were arguing that it's all about, "the children" Kramer was just as succint, "One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to marry."
It isn't over, not by a long shot. First, it will be appealed and, in all probability will go to the State Supreme Court. Regardless of the ruling that ought to be where it stops, since this a states' rights issue. There is no federal question (Though some have tried to argue the full-faith and credit clause applies, it's a very weak connection, since that line of reasoning could be stretched to make any case a federal issue).
Assuming (as I hope, and pray) that the Supreme Court of Calif. affirms the decision of the lower court (a simple denial to hear the case would do the trick.... and this was a Wilson appointed judge, a conservative, apparently in the best sense of the word) there will be an attempt to get the state constitution amended to ban it.
That attempt (to get an initiative before the people) will be successful. Prop. 22 passed, and that means enough people will sign the petition to get it on the ballot.
So the question is, how many people will turn out to vote on the issue?
Hard to say. Prop. 22, which is the law struck down, passed with 61.4 percent of the vote. That's a few percentage points shy of the 2/3rds needed to pass an amendment. On the other hand that was four years ago, during a presidential primary, so one can assume a larger than average number of people went to the polls, but that also means a small number (relatively speaking) of dedicated voters could have an effect all out of proportion to their numbers.
And it will also keep happening. Like the fight against evolution, they won't stop, and they have but to win once, to make it damned hard to beat them.
I'll close with something someone else quoted, when the streets of San Francisco were alive with happy couples, getting flowers from people across the nation, and allowed to show the world they were just like everyone else.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Nor bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
(1564 - 1616
Sonnet 116
Gavin Newsome is justified.
I knew the court would throw out the marriages he issued licenses for, they had to, because as Mayor he doesn't get to set aside laws he dislikes.
But he also set the stage for the lawsuit, which let a judge look at the law on it merits, and declare it has none.
In his ruling, Judge Kramer said creating benefits for same-sex couples, such as pension rights, was not sufficient.
"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts: separate but equal," he wrote. Opponents of gay marriage, and the main presidential candidates in last year's election, said they favoured giving gay couples equal rights, while insisting marriage should be between heterosexuals.
"It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners," Judge Kramer wrote.
"The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional." (from The Guardian)
He also said, "California's enactment of rights for same-sex couples belies any argument that the state would have a legitimate interest in denying marriage in order to preclude same-sex couples from acquiring some marital right that might somehow be inappropriate for them to have,"
When the people who were arguing that it's all about, "the children" Kramer was just as succint, "One does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to marry."
It isn't over, not by a long shot. First, it will be appealed and, in all probability will go to the State Supreme Court. Regardless of the ruling that ought to be where it stops, since this a states' rights issue. There is no federal question (Though some have tried to argue the full-faith and credit clause applies, it's a very weak connection, since that line of reasoning could be stretched to make any case a federal issue).
Assuming (as I hope, and pray) that the Supreme Court of Calif. affirms the decision of the lower court (a simple denial to hear the case would do the trick.... and this was a Wilson appointed judge, a conservative, apparently in the best sense of the word) there will be an attempt to get the state constitution amended to ban it.
That attempt (to get an initiative before the people) will be successful. Prop. 22 passed, and that means enough people will sign the petition to get it on the ballot.
So the question is, how many people will turn out to vote on the issue?
Hard to say. Prop. 22, which is the law struck down, passed with 61.4 percent of the vote. That's a few percentage points shy of the 2/3rds needed to pass an amendment. On the other hand that was four years ago, during a presidential primary, so one can assume a larger than average number of people went to the polls, but that also means a small number (relatively speaking) of dedicated voters could have an effect all out of proportion to their numbers.
And it will also keep happening. Like the fight against evolution, they won't stop, and they have but to win once, to make it damned hard to beat them.
I'll close with something someone else quoted, when the streets of San Francisco were alive with happy couples, getting flowers from people across the nation, and allowed to show the world they were just like everyone else.
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Nor bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
William Shakespeare
(1564 - 1616
Sonnet 116
Tuesday to the polls , Wednesday to the courts.
Date: 2005-03-16 03:36 am (UTC)Re: Tuesday to the polls , Wednesday to the courts.
Date: 2005-03-17 03:33 pm (UTC)I'm straight, white, and in the military. My last, non-Army related job was as a machinist, so if I think I'm entitled to an opinion, there's no reason you aren't.
The argument you try to make (that this is some "activist" judge trying to manufacture law) is tripe. What the House did yesterday (allowing Terri Schiavo's parents to go court shopping in the federal judiciary, which makes a federal case out of something which is pretty cut and dried a state issue, that's the House manfacturing judicial activism, and of the worst sort. It's precisely the thing the "tort reform" law is supposed to be preventing in class action suits, but I digress).
The judge did what judges are supposed to do, he looked at the law, looked at the source documents for the law (the primary document being the state constitution, and the parent of that being the US Constitution) and said the law he was asked to review was not in accord with them.
That is exactly the way the system is supposed to work. Had the State Supreme court upheld Newsome, when he started to issue licenses, that would have been judicial activism.
Newsome was morally right, and legally wrong. It was a Thoureauvian piece of political theater (which is to say he engaged in a, very public, act of civil disobedience, one which had thousands of people take part, from accross the nation), but he had no legal ground to violate the law.
But there was also the issue of standing. That bit of theater gave a specific harm to a number of people, which made it much easier for them to plead their case for having been denied equal treatment under the law.
The ridiculous assertion that ackowledging the sameness of gays love is the same as saying there are no things which have physical requirements is ridiculous on its face, which calls into question your professions of not being opposed to gay marriage.
If something is right, it's right. The converse is true. Separate is not equal.
The last bits of your questions make no sense. I don't know what messiah you are speaking of. The, "agenda" of gays is the same as that of women, blacks, hispanics, immigrants in general, and of all reasonable people: equal treatment.
Call me a ridiculous idealist, but I happen to ascribe, in general, to the principle that, "an it harm none, do as you will."
And I can see no harm from letting homosexuals marry.
As for legislating gooodwill, that is not the law's function. The laws functions are to punish ill-will, when it causes harm, and to level the playing field, so that certain harms (abject inequalities being foremost among them) are prevented.
This is in the latter.
TK
Re: Tuesday to the polls , Wednesday to the courts.
Date: 2005-03-23 12:08 am (UTC)I, too, follow "The Wiccan Rede". Does that mean I should be ignorant of political realities? Re-read what I wrote, 'not opposed'. Does that say I will be at the barricades or on a soapbox? Do heterosexuals speak of their 'peculiar institution'? Not that I've heard. And yet, and yet, always is a comparison made to segregation. Which, true, the Supreme Court did rule unconstitutional...years after it upheld it under the guise of separate but equal. The comparison to legal blindness? The reply syntax was a little faulty here, no doubt due to outrage. Be outraged. Then think of a valid reply for when your opponents make that argument in earnest. Again, -read- what I wrote. Did you miss the "acceptance, dammit" part? Or the fact that I don't believe the courts are all-wise, hence should erode what were distinctions between branches of government? You want gay marriage? Hear, hear! Start lobbying! Start writing your reps! Seek dialog with your opponents! Sell it! Just stop trying to convince me that only the courts are the only way. Work for it, if it is to be of any value.