Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Bad judges! No, wait, good judges


A question: Did the despicable activist judges on the California Supreme Court who once voted to allow gay marriage in the state suddenly became wise jurists now that they have voted to uphold the Proposition 8 vote that banned same-sex marriages there? Two things are certain: One, the issue is far from settled and, two, supporters of gay marriage will be taking the issue back before the electorate in what promises to be another obscenely expensive ballot battle. The only justice to dissent in Tuesday's ruling, Carlos Moreno, disagreed with the majority's opinion that Prop 8 did not change the equal-protection clause of the state constitution. Said Moreno, "Promising equal treatment to some is fundamentally different from promising equal treatment for all. Promising treatment that is almost equal (presumably he means civil unions) is fundamentally different from ensuring truly equal treatment." To the surprise of no one, I agree with Moreno, and the day will come when true equality is the law of the land.

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15 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

LETS VOTE ON IT!...Ah wait, we lost.

LETS TAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO THE SUPREME COURT!..Ah wait, we lost.

LETS VOTE ON IT AGAIN...
The horse has expired so stop beating it. You can't push your perverse lifestyles down our throat. And you can thank ACORN for prop 8 because those illegal Hispanics realize being gay is a sin and anti family. Thank you for registering them ACORN!

May 28, 2009 at 7:08 AM  
Blogger Brant said...

Just winning a few battles does not mean you're going to win the war. This just in:

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A survey released today shows that more than half of Rhode Island voters favor a law allowing gay marriage, leading advocates to point out to state leadership that it's what residents want.
A Brown University poll showed 60 percent of registered voters in the state said they would support a law allowing gay couples to marry, and 75 percent said they would support a law allowing civil unions. Thirty-one percent said they would oppose a gay marriage law.
"Even if they're not hearing constantly from constituents or people they work with about what they feel about marriage equality, it clearly gives the decision-makers something to look at when supporting marriage equality," said Kathy Kushnir, executive director of Marriage Equality Rhode Island.
While 77 percent of Democrats polled said they would support gay marriage, only 28 percent of Republicans shared that view.
Results also showed younger voters more heavily favored gay marriage. Eighty-seven percent of voters ages 18-29 supported it, as opposed to 32 percent of voters 70 and older.

The number of states allowing gay marriage continues to grow slowly, and as this poll suggests, as the older, more-likely-to-discriminate generations die off, gay marriage will become increasingly supported, and it eventually will become the law of the land. It's inevitable, but if that's where the Christian right wants to put its energy and resources, I'm glad to see them waste them here. As you might recall, Dr. Dingbat Dobson put a boatload of money into the Prop 8 fight, then had to lay off a ton of people at his headquarters operation. Shouldn't God have graced him with enough money to fight the gay hordes AND pay his minions?

May 28, 2009 at 7:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is a pattern with Libs. Push for a ballot initiative. If it loses take it to the court. If you lose with the court...Get it on the ballot again and repeat.
This is wasteful and unethical.

May 28, 2009 at 11:06 AM  
Blogger Ellipses said...

Anon... how old are you? Just out of curiosity...

May 28, 2009 at 11:11 AM  
Blogger Brant said...

Wasteful and unethical? It can't possibly be more wasteful and unethical than so-called religious organizations spending millions to try to maintain discrimination against an entire group of people who simply want the same rights and benefits as the rest of America's citizens. And what makes it especially wasteful is that the right-wing Christians are ultimately going to lose. They might as well put the money in a big pile and burn it. It would do just as much good in the long run. The Christian right is concerning itself with a series of 100-yard dashes while gay Americans and their supporters are running a marathon that they ultimately will win.

May 28, 2009 at 11:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Brant, you obviously didn't even read the ruling. You would not even be speaking about equal rights, etc, in this case. That is not what it is about, not what the court was asked to rule upon.

May 28, 2009 at 7:52 PM  
Blogger Brant said...

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. The ruling hinged on state constitutional issues, which I made clear. And it's also clear that this will be going back before the voters. What is your particular gripe with how I have reflected the status of the issue?

May 29, 2009 at 6:23 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Off the MSNBC site:

Rejecting a series of legal challenges to the gay marriage ban, the state's highest court ruled that stripping gays and lesbians of the right to wed was a legal exercise of the virtually unfettered initiative power the California Constitution grants its citizens.

>>>>>><<<<<<

The ruling was only related to the power of the citizenry to with regard to the vote. The issue at stake was the legality of the vote by the people. The issue at stake (same sex marriage) was not part of the ruling. The issue could have been any other of many referendum measures. The court is saying: The voters have been given the power to make their wishes known, and the court is not empowered to overturn the outcome of the vote.

The ruling has zero to do with equal rights, whether or not same-sex marriage is a good thing, or anything of the sort.

As the above posts suggest, the essay of this thread is misguided. Seeing the subject of same-sex marriage leads to the same rhetoric. In this case, it doesn't fit.

May 31, 2009 at 2:14 PM  
Blogger Brant said...

Thanks for rehashing in many more words what I had just said previously. But the point is, this issue of gay marriage and its legality in California and elsewhere isn't going away because of this particular ruling. It will be back before the voters in relatively short order, and while it might take years, it eventually will prevail.

May 31, 2009 at 3:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Good to see you have pulled back from your position about the ruling being centered around same-sex marriage. Perhaps a stronger retraction is in order, so that nobody else is misled into thinking the ruling was another one against same-sex marriage. Thanks for taking another look and understanding the wrong path of the initial posting.

June 2, 2009 at 8:44 AM  
Blogger Brant said...

I haven't pulled back from anything. There was nothing in the original post that was factually incorrect. I also quoted directly from a dissenting opinion in the ruling. And the ruling WAS centered on Prop 8. It wasn't a ruling on whether gay people should be allowed to marry. The court had already ruled that they were. It was a ruling on the legality of the referendum that effectively overturned the court's original decision. But the gay marriage debate is far from dead in California and elsewhere. I'm curious, what is your position on gay marriage, and what is your support for that position?

June 2, 2009 at 8:54 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

My heart goes out not only to the wonderful couples in CA that didn't make the marriage cut last fall but for those that did. The 2000+ couples allowed to keep their marriages legally I'm sure feel great pain as they're still considered as outsiders. Hmmm...I'm gay and would like to take away a heterosexual's right to marry the opposite sex...and a few other things for that matter. Tit-for-tat. If they can dictate how I live I should be able to do the same.

June 5, 2009 at 9:10 AM  
Blogger Brant said...

Ellipses has a great video about "traditional Biblical marriage" on his blog at http://criticalview-ellipses.blogspot.com/

June 5, 2009 at 9:27 AM  
Blogger Ellipses said...

Thanks for the plug, I just noticed it.

June 9, 2009 at 2:55 PM  
Blogger Brant said...

No problem, Kemosabe.

June 9, 2009 at 3:37 PM  

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