Prop 8 is dead for reals

[+ deej]

Everyone thought it was going to take a few weeks for the 9th Circuit to lift their stay of the previous decision for gay marriage to start once again in California. The 9th Circuit even said it would take 25 days.

 

But after urging from Atty. General Kamala Harris, the court moved a little faster and today (in a complete surprise to everyone) dissolved the stay effective immediately. Like now.

 

Both of the couples who brought the case have now been married. Kris Perry & Sandy Speirs were married in SF city hall by Kamala Harris. Paul Katami and Jeff Zirillo were married by outgoing mayor Antonio Villareigosa in Los Angeles.

 

It's really over.

 

The hundreds of thousands converging on SF for pride this weekend might do some celebrating, don't ya think?

[Frequentflier]

Everyone thought it was going to take a few weeks for the 9th Circuit to lift their stay of the previous decision for gay marriage to start once again in California. The 9th Circuit even said it would take 25 days.

 

But after urging from Atty. General Kamala Harris, the court moved a little faster and today (in a complete surprise to everyone) dissolved the stay effective immediately. Like now.

 

Both of the couples who brought the case have now been married. Kris Perry & Sandy Speirs were married in SF city hall by Kamala Harris. Paul Katami and Jeff Zirillo were married by outgoing mayor Antonio Villareigosa in Los Angeles.

 

It's really over.

 

The hundreds of thousands converging on SF for pride this weekend might do some celebrating, don't ya think?

 

Isn't this terrific!!! We may not be perfect and the process sure isn't always pretty, but we get there eventually. We've screwed up on same sex marriage rights and overlooked the rights of every citizen to enjoy ALL of their constitutional rights, didn't move to correct that easily and quickly, but when our system finally works and says an injustice will occur no longer we can move like lightening to implement. No protests, no riots, no valid doubting the legitimacy of the court decision, the decision is clear and the right is quiet enough while loving couples line up to marry. And the sails are full of fresh new winds so the haters on the right have good reason to lose their bladder contents down their legs; its now a shorter period of time until every state has to respect the rights of everyone. The stopwatch has been started. So happy for those I don't know and those I do that have had a huge anchor removed from their legs this week. God Bless America.

[tyro]

Amen.

T

[Decatur Guy]

A voice of pessimism here: Until the federal government steps in to break up state bans, I don't think the great things happening in the Northeast and West Coast will spread to Dixie. In fact, I think there are only a few more "easy" states left: Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, maybe Colorado and Illinois.

 

I don't see same-sex marriage in Utah or North Dakota or Kentucky or Alabama or Jawjah until it's forced on them from outside.

[+ Charlie]

It took until 1967 for interracial marriage to be forced on the hold-out states, but unless the court gets packed with clones of Scalia, I expect same-sex marriage to be forced on them a lot quicker through more lawsuits in the next few years.

[+ deej]

A voice of pessimism here: Until the federal government steps in to break up state bans, I don't think the great things happening in the Northeast and West Coast will spread to Dixie. In fact, I think there are only a few more "easy" states left: Hawaii, New Jersey, Oregon, maybe Colorado and Illinois.

 

I don't see same-sex marriage in Utah or North Dakota or Kentucky or Alabama or Jawjah until it's forced on them from outside.

 

That's true, but as long as DOMA prevented the federal government from recognizing same sex marriage in any way there certainly wasn't going to be any action on that front.

 

It's going to be a long slog. Congressman Tim Huelskamp (of the Kansas Huelskamps) has already said he's introducing a "one man one woman" marriage amendment to the constitution. It won't go anywhere (the congressman apparently isn't aware that DOMA was implemented because an amendment was the undesirable course of action), but that faction is still out there and isn't giving up any time soon.

 

That we're still arguing over the voting rights act of 1965 (or contraception and abortion) is proof that this fight won't be over until long after you and I are dead. But it's moving at breakneck speed compared to where we were when I was a horny teenager.

[+ Charlie]

As long as evangelicals, anti-abortionists, xenophobists, white power racists, etc., continue to self-segregate in particular states and congressional districts, they will have political power that is hard to overcome, regardless of what the national majority favors. Of course, the opposites of all those groups have also been migrating to areas where they will be surrounded by like-minded voters, which is why there are so few "swing districts" any longer. The best way to change marriage laws in Alabama through political means would be for a million gays from CA and NY to move there and vote.

[uwsman2]

The Prop 8 proponents have filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court asking them to stop the marriages, claiming that the 9th Circuit jumped the gun and had to wait until the time expired for proponents to file a petition for rehearing with the Court. The emergency motion will be sent to Justice Kennedy, the motions justice for the 9th Circuit. Ironically, he wrote the dissent arguing that the proponents did have standing to defend Prop 8 in court. I seriously doubt that Kennedy will grant this motion, since there is nothing in the rules requiring the lower court to delay implementing a Supreme Court decision. But it is interesting to see these phobes go to any possible length to stretch things out.

[+ deej]

Justice Kennedy has refused the petition with no explanation.

 

"Just Say No" has a new meaning.

[Guest]

The Prop 8 proponents have filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court asking them to stop the marriages, claiming that the 9th Circuit jumped the gun and had to wait until the time expired for proponents to file a petition for rehearing with the Court. The emergency motion will be sent to Justice Kennedy, the motions justice for the 9th Circuit. Ironically, he wrote the dissent arguing that the proponents did have standing to defend Prop 8 in court. I seriously doubt that Kennedy will grant this motion, since there is nothing in the rules requiring the lower court to delay implementing a Supreme Court decision. But it is interesting to see these phobes go to any possible length to stretch things out.

 

I have a friend who used to clerk for a justice of SCOTUS. These ludicrous "emergency" requests on issues which have already been deliberated ad nauseum really piss off the justices. (That also goes for "emergency" requests for stays of execution which have also been deliberated for many years, and come in the middle of the night) To interrupt a justice's vacation, on a week-end no less, with an issue they have all carefully discussed, serves only to show the justices how deluded and psychotic the Prop 8 proponents are, and shows a lack of respect for the justices' hard work and personal space. Although Justice Kennedy sided with them this time, bullshit motions such as this can only serve to turn the opinions of the justices such as Kennedy over to our side. It was Kennedy's predecessor, Justice Lewis Powell, who changed his mind on sodomy laws and later admitted he made a mistake in not voting to overturn Georgia's sodomy law:

 

Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986), is a United States Supreme Court decision, overturned in 2003, that upheld, in a 5-4 ruling, the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law criminalizing oral and anal sex in private between consenting adults when applied to homosexuals.

The majority opinion, written by Justice Byron White, argued that the Constitution did not confer "a fundamental right to engage in homosexual sodomy." A concurring opinion by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger cited the "ancient roots" of prohibitions against homosexual sex, quoting William Blackstone's description of homosexual sex as an "infamous crime against nature", worse than rape, and "a crime not fit to be named." Burger concluded: "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching."[2] Justice Lewis F. Powell later said he regretted joining the majority, but thought the case of little importance at the time.

The dissent, authored by Justice Harry Blackmun, framed the issue as revolving around the right to privacy. Blackmun's dissent accused the Court of an "almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity" and an "overall refusal to consider the broad principles that have informed our treatment of privacy in specific cases." In response to invocations of religious taboos against homosexuality, Blackmun wrote: "That certain, but by no means all, religious groups condemn the behavior at issue gives the State no license to impose their judgments on the entire citizenry. The legitimacy of secular legislation depends, instead, on whether the State can advance some justification for its law beyond its conformity to religious doctrine."

Seventeen years after Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court directly overruled its decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), and held that anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional. In overruling Bowers v. Hardwick, the Court stated that "Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today."