Same Sex Marriage

(cross posted at Fox & Hounds Daily)

I had been planning to spend part of the week in a federal courthouse in Pasadena, where a special broadcast had been arranged so Southern Californians could watch the trial in the legal challenge to Prop 8 without having to go to the courtroom in San Francisco.

(cross posted at Fox & Hounds Daily)

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, a Republican appointee who is presiding over the trial in the federal legal challenge to Prop 8, has been asking lawyers and witnesses versions of the same question, over and over again. Why is the state involved in sanctioning marriages anyway?

Advocates of reversing California's ban on same-sex marriage have all but given up on qualifying a measure for the 2010 ballot. But the organizing continues.

One tactic is to encourage conversations with friends and relatives who oppose same-sex marriage. The idea is that changing minds on such a fraught topic requires one-on-one contact. This brief, funny video is pretty effective in getting across the message that such conversations should never be confrontational.

Ballotpedia has a staff writer, Bailey Ludlam, in Maine who is filing a very informative travel journal on her interviews with people on both sides of some of the major initiatives and referenda on the November ballot there--including Question 1 (same-sex marriage), Question 2 (auto excise tax) and Question 4 (a cap on state spending--a former of the so-called TABOR, or Taxpayers Bill of Rights limits that have been a hot issue in other states, most notably Colorado, which adopted TABOR and th

In announcing its decision to wait until 2012 to qualify an initiative legalizing same-sex marriage, Equality California released this extensive plan for victory.

It's worth a read, even if you don't care about marriage equality. Why? Because the document is blunt -- and detailed -- in explaining the difficulties of drawing young voters to the polls.

Supporters of same-sex marriage seem to be moving to delay a ballot initiative campaign to overturn Prop 8 and legalize such marriages from 2010 until 2012. Their thinking is that they need more time to convert voters, and that the 2012 electorate will be larger -- and younger, and thus more inclined to back same-sex marriage.

The California Supreme Court's decision today to uphold Prop 8 is more about the California constitution and the initiative process (the true winner in the case) than it is about same-sex marriage. In effect, by a 6-1 vote, the court makes plain that it would have loved to overturn Prop 8--but couldn't because of the constitution.

I've just completed a very fast reading of the California Supreme Court decision this morning that upholds the Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage -- and also upholds the legality of the approximately 18,000 gay couples who got married in the state last year.

Yes, according to Travis Ballie, writing at Daily Kos. He thinks it would be a stronger statement to have voters -- rather than judges -- overturn the Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage. I tend to agree, since the goal is not simply legal same-sex marriage in California but marriage equality nationwide.

The California Supreme Court just announced it will rule on legal challenges to Prop 8, the California initiative ban on same-sex marriage, on Tuesday.