AddieStan

The California Supreme Court has essentially ratified Proposition 8, the ballot measure that nullified an earlier court decision legalizing marriage rights for LGBT folks. Yet Californians already married will be permitted to remain so, regardless of the gender mix of their marriages. One suspects that the court could not agree on constitutional grounds for overturning the expressed "will of the people". Yet the legitimizing of marriages already performed calls constitutional questions of its own. The closeness of the Prop 8 vote suggests another electoral battle to come. From the Los Angeles Times Prop. 8 upheld by California Supreme Court : By Maura Dolan 10:08 AM PDT, May 26, 2009 Reporting from San Francisco -- The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law. The decision virtually ensures another fight at the ballot box over mar...

From your blogstress's fellow traveler, In These Times columnist Hans Johnson , comes this informative analysis of California Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage last week in the nation's most populous state. Here's a taste: Sixty years ago, against a steep and contrary bent of public opinion, the same court upheld the right of a Mexican American woman, Andrea Perez, to marry her African-American sweetheart, Sylvester Davis, in Los Angeles. It took two decades for the U.S. Supreme Court to finally follow California’s lead and nix all such bans on interracial marriages. In the current marriage case, Carlos Moreno, the court’s sole Latino justice, and two others joined the ruling by George, an appointee of former Republican governor Pete Wilson. George became the court’s chief justice the very month (May 1996) that fellow Californian Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, confounded religious conservatives by striking down an ant...