Who was threatened most by prop 8?
According to The Field Poll, a California polling company operating since 1947, majorities in favor of banning civil rights…
Conservatives and Mccain supporters were the largest group… ever vigilant in the war on terror ensuring that al queda no longer hates us for our freedom… by surrendering said freedom…

Those without a higher education went 2/3’s for the ban vs. the 2/3’s with a higher education that opposed it… maybe this is why liberals tend to have a pro education agenda?

People over the age of 65 and African Americans also went for the ban in larger numbers than did not… Maybe it’s a longing for simpler times that sparked this

Until 1967, white and black could not a wedded oreo marriage make in 16 states…
This of course means that had the current president elects parents lived in one of those states… among other firsts, he would likely be our first bastard president… although we could debate that semantically in regards to what exactly constitutes a bastard president…

I do not doubt that the vast majority of people who voted for the ban consider themselves tolerant of homosexuality, simply not in the case of marriage…

And it is here that the problem with tolerance is made most clear.
That it is at our will… by tolerance we mean that we allow something only as we see fit to.
When that thing we are allowing – only as we see fit – is the civil rights of another member of our society? We are oppressors operating under the slave owner mentality that we are just in doing so. That it is our right to oppress.

If I seem overly pointed in directing this towards the African American community it is because I am horrified that the connection to past civil rights abuses is so effortlessly ignored in the present by a community that knows so intimately the pain that a majority sanctioned injustice can inflict. That there are old white republicans that harbor such discrimination is not news to me, but it was hoped by me that they were a dieing breed. That they have found the replacements, have passed the torch of bigotry to those they discriminated against for so long, leaves me dumbfounded.

Basic civil rights in America are not privileges to be revoked or limited at the public whim.

There can be no legitimate law written that removes these rights from the fabric of our society and those that try – put themselves in very poor company.

-justin

e.

Its time for all of Gods children to back him and say no to this sin.

My god is too busy with beer and wenches to care who I sleep with or fall in love with. Praise Thor!

Give me one good reason that your gods preferences should be legally valued over mine. If it passes the Lemon test, I’ll convert.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_test#Lemon_test

Its time for all of Gods children to back him and say no to this sin. Or we will all be burning in hell

Assuming that you are right, are you saying that God’s argument against Gay marriage is: “Do as I say or you’ll burn in hell”?

Surely we should all fight such a genocidal God!

If civil partnerships are still allowed in CA, and they offer the same rights and protections as traditional marriage…

They are quite different actually. For example, marriage has no co-habitation requirement, whereas domestic partnerships do. Which means that you have to be living at the same address *before* you enter the partnership.

Persons under 18 cannot enter a domestic partnership. They can marry with a court order.

The putative spouse doctrine doesn’t apply to domestic partnerships.

A marriage certificate can be designated “confidential” to prevent it from being released to the public. No such process exists for domestic partnerships.

Domestic partnerships also discriminate against heterosexuals: different-sex couple cannot enter a domestic partnership unless they are older than 62.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, studies have shown that employers do not treat domestic partnerships the same as marriages when it comes to awarding benefits. For example, my company allows an open time window every year to change your medical benefits; then, during the year, you can only change benefits if a “significant event” occurs in your life, such as marriage or divorce. “Domestic partnerships”, according to my company, aren’t considered significant events (I inquired specifically), so even though I can sign up a domestic partner for benefits, I have to wait until the special time window, which only occurs once a year. There’s also some funny business with how taxes are dealt with: I think that because domestic partnerships aren’t recognized federally, the benefits to the partner are taxed as additional income. Although that’s just the fact that there’s no federal recognition of same-sex anything, not a difference between domestic partnerships and marriage.

There’s also an issue of how courts will now resolve disputes when it comes to spousal benefits. For example, in the case Koebke v. Bernardo Heights Country Club, Brigit Koebke argued that her same-sex registered domestic partner was eligible for free games of golf afforded to “spouses” of members of the country club. The California Supreme Court agreed with her – that was *before* Prop. 8 was passed. Now, chances are, the court will disagree, because the new amendment establishes the definition of marriage as specifically distinct from domestic partnership, and if the country club argues that “spouse” is defined as a “party in marriage”, then benefits don’t have to apply.

Finally, beside the heaps of legal trouble, there’s also an issue of how people are treated. This is a cultural issue, but it is affected by the terms used. A study out of New Jersey found that found that “people in civil unions were not treated the same way as married couples by government agencies, employers and others. One of the big issues is that people do not understand what civil unions are and how they differ from marriage.” That’s what the “separate but equal” concept is about — even if you “say” you are awarding two groups the same rights, as long as you keep the *implementation* of those rights distinctly separate, equality doesn’t come.

To let you know where I stand: I am very much in favour of “gay marriage”, but I just want to know exactly what the practical consequences of this amendment are in terms of people’s rights and freedoms.

In this case, civil servants who feel it is unjust to refuse marriage licences to gay couples should issue these licences anyway.

Compare this with Abortion. Abortion would never have been legalized if the law that banned it was not violated on a massive scale.

What happens is that people who have a stake in the issue are a minority, while the majority who do not have a stake in it oppose it because it is a taboo issue. If the minority confronts the majority by fighting for their rights, then the majority will back off because they won’t be prepared to fight for a an issue that is irrelevant to their lives.

Luke is right, technically. The law currently grants everyone the right to marry an adult, consenting member of the opposite sex who is not immediate family. It gives that right to everyone. It does not give us the right to marry whoever we may love. The debate is about changing this law. People on both sides of this issue feel very strongly about it, so we ought to deal with it logically instead of emotionally (I know, easier said than done). But that is the real debate, so why don’t we debate that instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole? It’s not that it would be hard to argue that the definition needs to be changed.

Oh, and ridiculous ads attacking people and accusing them of feeling that they might not have probably do more harm than good.

What that California Supreme Court did this year, however, is something altogether different. It essentially decided to redefine the definition of marriage as something different from that which has been in existence for centuries.

This is a semantics argument. The Supreme Court redefined precisely nothing about whatever it is you think is the definition of marriage, because the tradition of marriage is not codified in law. What’s codified is a set of legal protections, a particular type of contract, that happens to be called by the same name as a traditional ceremony. The Supreme Court ruled that those protections should apply equally to same-sex couples, and to make sure that these protections don’t deviate from those afforded to heterosexual couples (that’s what “separate but equal” usually results in), they are to apply to same-sex couples under the same name.

Again, the tradition and ceremony of marriage, as much as it has changed on its own without any help from any judges (see someone else’s post above with a brief course on history), were not even mentioned in the court’s ruling.

By the way, why are you so comfortable with the fact that it were the courts that repealed the “silly” (interesting choice of word, by the way – I’d use words like “tragic” or “disgusting”) ban on interracial marriage? It sounds that by your logic, you would like the people to finally decide on their own that that’s what they want.

Who, perchance, are you referring to when you say “those who have felt left out of mainstream society”? Am I to guess? It seems disingenuous to say-without-saying, like you left a back door for yourself to fill in the blank later.

Check this, from the LA Times:

“But preliminary data showed that Democrats and independents were tending to vote against Proposition 8, while Republicans were in favor of the measure.

“The proposition was trailing among white voters, but was ahead among black voters. Latino voters were closely divided.

“People who said they attended religious services weekly were overwhelmingly voting for the measure, while those who said that they occasionally or never went to religious services were voting no.

“Voters older than 65 voted mostly for the proposition, while those in the 18-29 range voted against it.”

Here’s what I saw. Protests on corners, Pro 8, were majority white. Against 8, predominantly white. In my house, which is a black household, three adults voted against Prop 8. Our neighbors—gay and black and a couple—doubtless voted against 8. But who had the Pro 8 signs in their windows? The late twenties, white, religious, hetero, Republican couple.

I am utterly ashamed of these Pro 8 people, and disappointed that Californians gave this hateful, un-American prop a thumbs-up. For me, it almost spoiled my good feelings after Obama’s victory. And this is not even to discuss Prop 11, which will give Republicans a much better position to protect their interests in California.

I will agree with you, though, that the next step is to continue to illuminate society and plan to rescind this in a future election. The bad news is CA requires only a 50% threshold to pass oppression, but the flip side good news is it takes only 50% to toss it back in the dung-heap of history. We need only flip 2% of the electorate on the west coast, our brethren in FL have to flip almost 25% before they can try again

For some reason, some just don’t like science. They like technology quite a bit, in fact they often display techno-fetishism, but something about the questioning nature of science – it must be that it undermines authority, which threatens the integrity of the state… or something. Technology, once safely patented and controlled, doesn’t need to be understood to sell, so it is safe – unless it is disruptive to existing markets, in which case it must be suppressed. For example: we all have cell phones, but there are no electric cars. That’s not because of any technological limitation, as science can demonstrate.

Government bodies that base their policy on science research (or are supposed to) include the FDA, the EPA, the DOE, NOAA and NWS, NASA, USGS, etc. Hopefully, now they’ll be run by people who all agree on the basic scientific approach. Politicization of science… that’s an ugly business, and maybe now we’ll see less of it, so yes, go celebrate.

Michelle Obama talks a lot about education, which is hopeful… this is really the best way to undermine mindless political machines: educate the base. “Now, the Earth really is about 4 billion years old, and no, you don’t have to be an atheist to study science.” That means supporting schools all across the country, from rural regions to suburbia to inner cities. That’s real investment in the future, the kind that will always pay off.

P.S. Marcus Garvey turned out to be wrong, didn’t he?