Goodbye to Prop. 8

[garbon]

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/02/goodbye-to-prop-8.html

Proposition 8, the California law banning gay marriage, was held to be unconstitutional today by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel was divided along political lines, with the one conservative Republican of the three judges voting against the ruling. (I wrote about the case under appeal, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, before it went to trial, in 2010.)

Today's ruling pointedly did not uphold a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry. Instead, the judges ruled on more limited grounds, basing their argument closely on the Supreme Court's 1996 decision in a Colorado case, Romer v. Evans. In Romer, the Court overturned Amendment 2, which barred the state of Colorado from providing equal-rights protection on the basis of sexual orientation, thus invalidating local ordinances that already did so. The Supreme Court ruled that the amendment violated the Constitution's Equal Protection clause by a singling out "a certain class of citizen for disfavored legal status." That, said the Court, smacked of animus.

What was unconstitutional about Proposition 8, Tuesday's ruling said, was that it, too, stripped same-sex couples of a right they had already possessed—same-sex marriage had been legal for about six months in California before Proposition 8 passed—and that it did so for no legitimate reason. In that sense, said the panel, Prop. 8 was much like Colorado's Amendment 2. "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples," today's ruling declared. "The constitution simply does not allow for 'laws of this sort,' " it continued, quoting Romer.

The narrowness of today's ruling is telling: the Ninth Circuit panel could have, and did not, offer an opinion on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Today's ruling only deals with Proposition 8, and only applies to California. It also suggests a way the Supreme Court might rule that would uphold equal protection, while stopping short of authorizing same-sex marriage. (Proponents of Proposition 8 will almost certainly appeal today's decision.) And it proposes a Supreme Court-tested argument that once same-sex marriage has been permitted, it can't be taken away.

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/02/goodbye-to-prop-8.html#ixzz1ljvkzNrX

[Neil]

It'll be back, because fags are icky.

[garbon]

I just wanna know how many lives the fucker has.

[Neil]

Until Martinusism is defeated.

[CountDeMoney]

I just wanna know how many lives the fucker has.

Don't worry; once it gets to the US Supreme Court, it'll be officially killed forevah.

[Martinus]

"Gays can now be as miserable as the rest of the population. Hur hur hur."