CAIVP > gay marriage
From Politico:
Leading social conservatives blasted Newsweek for its current cover story, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage," which they said misinterprets both biblical scripture and their own political movement.
“It doesn’t surprise me. Newsweek has been so far in the tank on the homosexual issue, for so long, they need scuba gear and breathing apparatus,” said Richard Land, who heads the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “I don’t think it’s going to change the minds of anyone who takes biblical teachings seriously.”
The Sacramento Bee reports that historians say there is no one "traditional" view of marriage throughout history.
"Traditional marriage has varied immensely from society to society and time period," said Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., and is the author of "Marriage, A History."
Coontz said one form of marriage has been supported by more societies prior to the 18th century than any other.
And it's not one man, one woman.
"It's one man, many women," said Coontz, citing examples from the Old Testament.
Expect to see more of this as the debate over marriage in California rages on.
Read More...Justice Joyce L. Kennard has been a reliable supporter of gay rights in the past, but last week she was the only Supreme Court jurist to vote against hearing legal challenges to the gay-marriage ban.
Kennard, 67, the longest-serving member of the court, has never "marched in step" with the other justices, said Santa Clara University Law Professor Gerald Uelmen, an authority on the court.
She wrote more dissents during the last term than any other justice and led the court in concurring opinions, a sign that she sticks to her views even when she agrees with the majority on a ruling.
She is viewed as inflexible when it comes to her principles and refuses to budge on even relatively minor matters of the law. Analysts have found signs that some of Kennard's dissents may actually have begun as majority opinions, suggesting that she refused to modify them to keep the needed votes.
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Proposition 8 continues to bitterly divide many parts of California, and Hollywood is not immune. The LA Times reports today that Hollywood businesses and public figures are being targeted for their support of the same-sex marriage ban. From the Times:
Should there be boycotts, blacklists, firings or de facto shunning of those who supported Proposition 8?
That's
the issue consuming many in liberal Hollywood who fought to defeat the
initiative banning same-sex marriage and are now reeling with
recrimination and dismay. Meanwhile, activists continue to comb donor
lists and employ the Internet to expose those who donated money to
support the ban.
Already out is Scott Eckern, director of the
nonprofit California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, who resigned after
a flurry of complaints from prominent theater artists, including
"Hairspray" composer Marc Shaiman, when word of his contribution to the
Yes on 8 campaign surfaced.
Other targets include Film Independent, the nonprofit arts organization that puts on both the Los Angeles Film Festival and the Spirit Awards; the Cinemark theater chain; and the Sundance Film Festival.
For many in Hollywood, the Proposition 8 backlash represents a troubling clash of free speech, religious beliefs and the right to fight intolerance. Many supporters of same-sex marriage view the state constitutional amendment as codified bigotry, a rollback of civil liberties for gays and lesbians.
Read the rest of the story about Hollywood & Prop. 8 here.
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From pensitoreview.com:
In a recent San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmeic, who served as a high official in the Reagan and Bush I Justice departments but who supported Barack Obama this year, laid out a compromise to the constitutional debacle brought on by the passage of Proposition 8 that puts the solution in the hands of California’s governor:
Read More..."...The governor has administrative authority to have regulations issued interpreting family law, and nothing in Prop. 8 precludes him from ensuring that homosexual and heterosexual couples are treated equally under state law so long as he stays clear of “marriage.” This could be accomplished by limiting the state of California prospectively to the issuance of civil unions for all couples, rather than marriage licenses, leaving marriage, which in origin is predominantly a religious concept and not the real business of the state, to religion..."
For those of us who remember Prop 22 in 2000, the intense battles in the California Legislature, the drama of the Supreme Court ruling last summer, and the most recent Prop 8, you'd think the issue of gay marriage would be settled by now.
Well think again.
The Associated Press reports that the California Supreme Court has agreed to hear challenges to the constitutional amendment that says the state will only recognize marriage when it is between one man and one woman.
And so it continues...
The Proposition 8 debate is about to get a lot more heated. Today, the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Attorney General Jerry Brown and the attorneys for Protect Marriage seek constitutional review of voter-approved ban on gay marriage:
The likelihood of a final California Supreme Court showdown over same-sex marriage increased dramatically Monday when Attorney General Jerry Brown and the pro-Proposition 8 campaign urged the justices to decide whether the voter-approved ballot measure is constitutional.
Both Brown, the state government's top lawyer, and the Protect Marriage campaign organization plan to defend Prop. 8, which would write a ban on same-sex marriage into the state Constitution. In separate filings Monday, the liberal attorney general and the conservative sponsors of the initiative gave similar reasons for asking the court to review lawsuits filed by the measure's opponents...
As discussed in a previous article by one of our authors, this case looks to be escalating toward a much bigger issue; namely, the inability of the court to protect individual rights in the face of a purely democratic rule of law.
Read the Full Article Here from the San Francisco Chronicle.
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Here is an interesting blog from Out Gay Life regarding California's passage of Proposition 8 as it relates to the brighter hopes for the gay rights movement in Georgia:
With the passage of Prop 8, bigotry may have won in California. But with a runoff election ahead of us, we have the opportunity to hit back against bigotry in the least likely place — Georgia! (Well, I guess the least likely place would be Utah, but a pro-gay Democrat winning in Georgia would be an awesome way to end the year.)
Democrat Jim Martin and a Libertarian held Saxby Chambliss to 49.83% of the vote in the general election. Under Georgia law, you eliminate the minor candidates and vote again if nobody gets 50%. Recent polling has the race at 49-46 in Chambliss’ favor. The race will be determined by which party can motivate its people to actually show up and vote in the runoff election...
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As CAIVP predicted a few days ago, Attorney General Jerry Brown is now facing a major constitutional battle with respect to the passage of Proposition 8. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
The California Supreme Court has asked state Attorney General Jerry Brown to reply by Monday to lawsuits challenging the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage - a sign that the justices are taking the cases seriously and will not dispose of them quickly.
Two groups of gay and lesbian couples and local governments led by the city of San Francisco filed the suits a day after the Nov. 4 election, when Proposition 8 passed with a 52 percent majority.
They argue that the initiative, a state constitutional amendment, violates other provisions of the California Constitution by taking rights away from a historically persecuted minority group and stripping judges of their power to protect that group. The couples' suits contend that Prop. 8 makes such fundamental changes that it amounts to a constitutional revision, which can be placed on the ballot only by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature...
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The La Times is reporting that Proposition 8 opponents are taking it to the wallets of its supporters.
More than a week after the passage of Proposition 8, activists opposed to the ban on gay marriage have shifted their protests to new arenas -- using boycotts to target businesses and individuals who contributed to the winning side.
The effect of the boycotts remains unclear. Merchants said that the overall poor economy made it difficult to tell whether their businesses were declining specifically because of the threats. But the protests have been highly visible and have drawn strong objections from backers of the initiative...
Read the Full Artcile Here
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