Saturday, October 13, 2007

Arnie Tromps on Equality Again

Despite the vastly changed voter views from 2000, and despite petitions and hundreds of personal pleas, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did veto same-sex marriage...again.

The little feller MassEquality's Marc Solomon calls a wimp for his anti-gay/anti-equality stance has a real problem with democracy. He showed his gutlessness again on this issue yesterday. He once more said the courts should decide this.

The irony and duplicity should not be ignored here. In states like Massachusetts where courts mandate SSM or civil unions, wingers and bigots say it should have been the legislature. When the legislature decides (you know, that representative democracy thing that all but the smallest town meetings use) in places like California, the anti folk say it has to be the courts.

In his veto statement, L'il Arnie "said that all Californians are entitled to full protection under the law 'and should not be discriminated against based upon their sexual orientation.'" His accompanying action is "hypocrisy at its worst," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California. "We find it shocking for the governor to say he opposes discrimination based on sexual orientation and then veto a bill that would have ended discrimination based on sexual orientation."

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1 comment:

Rick Hoyt-McDaniels said...

when the courts mandate marriage equality the opposition says the legislature should decide, and vice versa, as you point out. And when both the court and the legislature moves to legalize same sex marriage the opposition will demand that "the people" decide. The answer to the question "who should decide" is always whichever group will decide their way. The problem with that strategy (besides its being un-democratic) is that not only legal opinion but also popular opinion is inexorably moving toward marriage equality. Eventually there will be no group who doesn't support marriage equality except the bigots themselves. Eventually Arnold will get run over by the course of history. He should have seen it coming.