Gay Marriage to Alfred: Your Thoughts

Yeah, that's sort of how I took this one too. Court was all, you took it out of our hands, so you now have to live with yourselves while all these other states show you up.

tipsy and Eric OTM

Yeah - unfortunate, but predictable.

Here is my friend Steve's report, live from city hall in SF:

it was weird there. all this chanting, then one long-haired dude came out with this thumbs down, all the gays started shouting "shame on you" and the pro-prop 8ers cheered, then the gays crossed the street to chant somewhere else, and it was over.

traffic being blocked now, apparently.

Lame that the courts didn't strike this down, but they didn't really have a legal rationale for doing so. You can't rule constitutional amendments unconstitutional.

back to the ballot box.

it'll happen

the ruling is pretty interesting tho:

Proposition 8 reasonably must be interpreted in a limited fashion as eliminating only the right of same-sex couples to equal access to the designation of marriage, and as not otherwise affecting the constitutional right of those couples to establish an officially recognized family relationship.
Ruling, pg. 37. And:

Accordingly, although Proposition 8 eliminates the ability of same-sex couples to enter into an official relationship designated “marriage,” in all other respects those couples continue to possess, under the state constitutional privacy and due process clauses, “the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage,” including, “most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.” (Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th 757, 781.) Like opposite-sex couples, same-sex couples enjoy this protection not as a matter of legislative grace, but of constitutional right. Page 41

so it seems like they're explicitly saying prop. 8 isn't (and can't) take away rights, only the designation of the word "marriage." wonder how that will play out. is there an existing civil unions law in the state?

I... think so?

It's a slippery answer to a tough question. They're talking out of both sides of their judge holes b/c they don't want to be pinned down.

I haven't read the decision (in whole) but this fits w/ the idea that marriages that were performed are still valid but that no new ones can take place. Everyone has the right the constitutional rights and responsibilities associated with marriage, but Prop 8 forbids "official" marriage.

Blech.

I finally read Sam Schulman's article and this
Now to live in such a system, in which sexual intercourse can be illicit, is a great nuisance. Many of us feel that licit sexuality loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph.

reminds me a lot of Kirk Cameron's dad's assertion re gay sex

“It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything.”

He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. “Marital sex tends toward the boring end,” he points out. “Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does”

Man, I need to use this line of reasoning on straight buddies.

hetero sex is pretty fuckin dope fwiw

reminds me a lot of Kirk Cameron's dad's assertion re gay sex

wait what

Source of the Paul Cameron quote http://www.pflagdetroit.org/Holy_War_OnGays.htm

That is not the Kirk Cameron of "Growing Pains" fame, btw. It is a different Kirk Cameron.

Oh crap. Really?

too good to be true I guess

Haha - I'm embarrassed, but you can probably understand why I thought his son was THE Kirk Cameron.

Yes. California recognizes the "domestic partner" status for (a) same-sex couples and (b) heterosexual couples where one of the partners is 62 or over. They are afforded the same rights as married couples, but are just not "married."

And neither the 2008 decision or this most recent one (so far as I can tell) affects this.

er... why (b)?

not sure, California doesn't allow common law marriage either ... unless you were common law in a state that recognizes it before you moved to California.

(b) is very weird.

END MAY-DECEMBER DISCRIMINATION NOW

Oh wait, maybe that's a loophole to get elderly relatives onto your health plan? But wouldn't they already be classifiable as dependents, anyway?

Maybe it's a way to make sure that older people who're likely to spend time in the hosp get to have their partner of their waning years qualify as family? It seems like a really weird differentiation, but I guess with the number of "single" retirees, maybe it makes sense?

oic, like retirement home repairings where you are not at all likely to get married

Right, exactly.

I understand, and who knows what sort of process went on to arrive at this decision, but still, it's not like old folks are forbidden from having an official marriage. No harm in it I guess, still odd.

there are lots of reasons old folks don't remarry, almost all of them legal/financial. For ex., if you remarry, you may lose pension benefits of dead spouse, etc.

I don't think pension benefits work that way. Most death benefits don't have remarriage rules from my understanding, but there are undoubtedly other legal/financial issues.

pension benefits from divorce settlements probably have a remarriage clause.

could be, I dunno the niceties of the law in these cases - just speaking from personal experience where my divorced dad has no plans to marry his widowed girlfriend because her dead husband stuck some clause about her being cut off financially from his benefits if she remarried

into his will

My grandfather's will had a remarriage clause...so my crazy step-grandmother has been living with her much younger ex-con boyfriend for like a decade rather than lose the inheritance that pays for her life (and his).

Oooh, a telling xp.

maybe its just me but having that in your will seems like a sign of collosal assholism

Well, it was old fashioned of him. He married her to provide for her -- his responsibility as the man in her life. If she met and loved and married another man after him, that would be her new husband's responsibility. The end result is that she got all his lifetime of savings to put toward her support as a widow, and his children did not. Now she uses the money to support the man in her life.

My grandpa assumed that she would do the "honest" thing b/c he thought she was a person who shared his worldviews. Unfortunately that turned out not to be the case.

Btw fuck you.

haha sorry didn't mean to offend.

I was just thinking of it in terms of wanting your spouse to continue to be happy and cared for after you're gone. I mean, if I die I want my wife to be happy and if that means marrying someone else then hey, more power to her. I'll be dead, what will I care.

Yah. It's weird, I guess, bc they married late under strange circumstances and she didn't raise his family or endure being young and poor and struggling or anything. She was a younger woman who showed up late and walked off with the cash.

The offspring that would have inherited are all over it, it's been like 15 years. Just the injustice bothers me now.

You can't rule constitutional amendments unconstitutional.

Well, sure you can. e.g., if a simple majority of california voters approved a ballot measure amending the constitution to state that Jews could not own property in certain ZIP codes, that would fail the court's equal protection test.

tipsy mothra otm: the ruling effectively says "the initiative can stand (and we want to stay out of the business of overturning initiatives as much as possible) SO LONG AS there is no difference under the law between "marriage" and "whatever it is we call the legal union of a same-sex couple."

Or, sure, you can pass your no-property-for-Jews amendment so long as they can own "stuff."

A no-drama ruling is frustrating and disappointing but probably the right one for this state right now. The people will resolve it, and when they do the court will have demonstrated it's not in the business of challenging the people's will.

Now I've seen everything -- Ted Olson's going to fight against Prop 8 in federal court.

hmm. it seems to me (and a lot of people i've read on the issue) that if/when the supreme court rules on this, the better case to push will be on enforceable contracts, not on a federal "right to marry." i'm not at all confident that the current court is going to establish that right.

(plus i can't get past the sense that olson is looking for a little civil-rights glory in his old age, and this is the last train leaving the station. i can understand not wanting bush v. gore as the only thing in the lead of your obituary.)

enforceable contracts

what does this mean

I wonder what Ann Coultier thinks about Ted Olson now.

jeez ned the comments thread under that story o_0

i'd quote some but they make me too gnaqrr

My favorite obtuse comment, and one that I have read more than a few times: "Homosexual men can marry....women. Homosexual women can marry....men. How are they not equal to heterosexuals?"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rob-thomas/the-big-gay-chip-on-my-sh_b_208183.html