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 our friend Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council comes this loving invitation: Dear Adele, On Tuesday, April 28, Washington, D.C.-area pastors and pro-family leaders are gathering in the nation's capital to rally for man-woman marriage. The rally will take place from 10:00 a.m. to Noon on Freedom Plaza, which is located on Pennsylvania Avenue between 13th and 14th Streets, NW. Come take part and express your support for traditional marriage! Homosexual marriage advocates in Washington, D.C. are pushing the District of Columbia City Council to replace man-woman marriage with a law that will allow two men or two women to "marry." Just a few weeks ago the Council voted to recognize such "marriages" when they occur overseas or in the handful of other U.S. jurisdictions that allow them - most of them compelled to do so by activist judges who have ignored the will of the people. Let's remind our elected officials just what that will is: to protect marri...

Well, not quite -- the "gay nation" part, that is. But you gotta admit, for advocates of same-sex marriage, last week was stellar, especially in the melancholy aftermath of Proposition 8. Iowa's Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to ban same-sex marriage in that heartland state. That had Newt Gingrich railing yesterday, on "This Week With George Stephanopoulos", about the dangers of having the judiciary settle social issues: "[I]t's very dangerous for the country to have the judiciary become the chief agent of social change," said the former House speaker. I mean, look where that got us: having to go to school with black people and nixing the sexual harassment of women in the workplace. Bummer, man. And Newt's philosophical opposition to Iowa's new marriage scheme left him defenseless against the Green Mountain state's newfound barrier-free approach to same-sex marriage. That's right, in Vermont last week, the legislat...

The pushback by the LGBT movement against the anointment of Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration of Barack Obama has been such that Warren felt compelled to go before his own congregants to clarify his views on gay marriage, taking great pains to say that he never equated gay relationships with incest or polygamy. (He just said he disagreed with allowing gays to marry, just as he disagreed with allowing adults to marry children, brothers to marry sisters, and men to have more than one wife. Not that he was equating them or anything.) Here's Pastor Rick: CLICK THESE WORDS TO VIEW VIDEO Meanwhile, on "Hardball" last night, Mike Rogers of blogActive and PageOneQ masterfully reframed the conflict over Obama's invocational choice as one that sees the LGBT movement at its most powerful, ever. Check out Digby's recounting at Hullabaloo : ...Rogers took a very unusual tack and said that [the well-known Reverend Eugene]...

For more info on this bloggerific event, check out Mombian

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...

Indeed the time did arrive, mes amis , for your blogstress to offer an adult-type comment on yesterday's decision by the California Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. Adult-type meaning an expression of opinion that goes beyond your Webwench's native suspicion of marriage as a desirable state. And so, your ecrivaine dares to posit, at The Guardian's lively opinion site, Comment is Free, that when the "gay marriage" decision becomes an issue in the presidential campaign, it will likely hurt John McCain more than it will the Democratic nominee. CLICK HERE TO READ "MARRIAGE, CALIFORNIA STYLE" AT COMMENT IS FREE

Having been married once, your blogstress has never been one to beat the gay-marriage drum so loudly. While she understands that there are no equal rights for queer folk until we are free to marry within our own gender frames, it is an issue with such improbable personal ramifications for your Webwench that she has scarely ever worked up a dewy glow over it. Marriage is marriage, with all the attendant dynamics, and once was enough for your ecrivaine . She simply doesn't see where being married to a woman would be much of an improvement on that shopworn theme. That said, today's decision from the California Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage is a mind-blower. It's good stuff on the rights front. Gonna be evil in the presidential election. My solution? Keep the state out of the marriage biz altogether. Marriage is the business of the churches.

Splitting the difference Edwards: I don't believe in gay marriage, but my wife does If Edwards ever had a chance at getting the vote de l'ecrivaine , he just lost it.

Gay marriage and the black church We just heard from the Rev. Reggie Longcrier of Hickory, North Carolina, who is destined to be one of those momentary stars made by televised "town hall" candidate fora in presidential campaign years. The good reverend caused the audience to erupt in applause when he challenged John Edwards , the former North Carolina senator, to explain why the candidate's "Baptist upbringing" offers adequate justification for being against gay marriage. Rev. Longcrier reminded the smooth-talking trial lawyer that the Bible was used to justify slavery and deny women the vote. What made that such a big deal? Rev. Longcrier is African-American, and the rap on the black church is always about how homophobic it is. Your blogstress, errant Catholic that she is, has never bought that rap. By that, she doesn't mean that black churches don't have their share of homophobic leaders and followers; it's just no different there than amon...