Oh....Tdogg...I am so so sorry. It is a heavy blow. And I'm shaking my head thinking about all the money that is going to have to be spend putting a measure overturning this decision on the ballot and then getting it passed. All over the word 'marriage'. That's really what this is about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/us/27marriage.html?hp
Quote:
In questions that clearly anticipated the logic of today’s majority opinion, the justices had seemed to be seeking a middle ground that would allow the rights they had affirmed the year before to be preserved in the form of civil unions, which would be different from marriage in name only. Justice Kennard suggested that the substantive rights of gays were the same after the proposition, and all that had changed was “the label of marriage.”
That distinction was deeply dissatisfying to Mr. Minter, representing the plaintiffs, who argued that without the right to the word “marriage,” same-sex couples would find “our outsider status enshrined in our Constitution.”
Chief Justice George’s opinion dealt directly with that point, stating that the court understood the importance of the word marriage and was not trying to diminish it. However, he wrote, the legal right of people to call themselves married is only one of the rights granted to same-sex couples in the decision last May, and so “it is only the designation of marriage -- albeit significant--that has been removed by this initiative measure.”
Karl Manheim, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called the decision a “safe” position written by justices who can be recalled by voters. The change wrought by Proposition 8 was anything but narrow, he said, and claiming that the word marriage was essentially symbolic was like telling black people that sitting in the back of the bus was not important as long as the front and back of the bus arrive at the same time.In the months since the case was argued, three other states have legalized same-sex marriage. On April 3, Iowa’s supreme court struck down a state statute that limited civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman — and cited California’s 2008 decision repeatedly in support of its ruling. Less than a week later, the Vermont Legislature narrowly overrode a veto by Gov. Jim Douglas of a bill that allowed same-sex couples to marry. Then on May 6, Maine’s legislature, too, passed a bill allowing same-sex marriage, and Gov. John Baldacci signed it.
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So....the word marriage is not that big a deal according to Justice Kennard, who wrote the majority opinion? It's just a label?
Then why all the fuss?
We're back were we started, except that 18 thousand couples are still married. Otherwise, gay people in California are being told that the back the bus is right where they belong.
Know what's ironic in this situation? This is the same group of judges that gave the green light for gay marriage in the first place.