Which old witch? The bigot’s wish! Sorry Judy, but the Mormon church and every other bigot (especially those adorning their hatred on front lawns and bumper stickers) can suck my Lolipop Guild. Oh happy day! The haters out of state and around the world have been put in their place by glorious jurisprudence.
I don’t even believe in hetero marriage, as I’ve said pretty much all along, but I’ll be damned if some people should be able to suffer while others cannot, and there truly are innumerable legal advantages to what marriage can bring (immigration alone). My daughter’s classmate keeps pointing out that gay people have the right to marry (people of the opposite sex) but I can’t believe that rhetoric would even be taken seriously by those who spent money and time trying to limit the rights of a vibrant part of the population.
So congratulations to my home state, my father’s home state and the home of my grandparents and great-grandparents (to which I returned to live for the fifth time in 2007), for agreeing with almost half the voters (not that decisions of this magnitude should be made by propositions in the first place). California realizes that we cannot remain in Draconian times by making endemic minorities systematically inferior. I’m already embarrassed enough by our European neighbors who don’t have to think twice about these things.
My hope is that the case is indeed appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, which generally does not put its fingers on domestic relations cases of any kind (although one could argue this is a civil rights case). Most cases that are brought to the US Supreme Court are not heard, and so the ruling of the federal Judges, such as this one, remain as law in good standing. There is only a need to hear it if the Court feels like there was an error in interpreting the law, which in the federal arena, includes most importantly, the US Constitution. On that basis, this decision is sound, and agreeing to hear the case could easily create a mandate that all states allow gay marriage, which is why the supporters of Proposition 8 had better be damn careful they don’t open up that Pandora’s box. Still, I think it’s ridiculous to have a hodge-podge of gay marriage rights in one country. Canada had that for a little while and it was seen as ridiculous, so they made gay marriage completely legal in every province. Let’s have some common sense like they did. Our grandchildren will be wondering what all the damn fuss was about.
I am also confident that no legislature in California would ever get the support it needed to overturn such a ruling and because of the Supremecy Clause of the US Constitution, it would be moot. The haters should look at the bright side — the financial windfall that legalizing gay marriage necessarily brings to a jurisdiction should be welcome, especially by the party that touts fiscal responsbility and libertarian ideals of keeping the government out of our lives and by extension bedrooms. Besides, California’s budget can use all the help it can these days, which is why even Republican Schwarzenegger wouldn’t have thwarted the gay marriage rights if it had crossed his desk and he had little to say in opposition to it. Indeed, if it wasn’t for gay men, he may never have achieved the status that he had in his Hollywood career, which we all know was based almost exclusively on his physique and not his “talent” for acting.
The important line of the decision today was that there was “no rational basis” why one group would need to subject the other group to a position of inferiority. Brace yourself for the backlash, my friends. Gay Judge or not, the fight for righteous equality is not over.
