Yes, damn it, yesterday's two-to-one 9th US Circuit Court ruling declaring Prop. 8 unconstitutional is sweet. On the other hand, it not the end of anything. The plug-ugly hating types are still at it there and elsewhere.
It did definitively say that you can't pull that crap...in California. The Prop. 8 ballot vote that reversed the legislature's legalization of marriage equality serves no purpose other than harming homosexual couples, the justices ruled. Hence, it's unconstitutional.
If the meanies would admit defeat (as likely as you or I levitating at will), that would be that. In 21 days, same-sex marriages would resume there. Any appeal to the whole Court would basically delay the works for another year. An appeal to the SCOTUS would in effect do the same.
I see an excellent chance that the Supremes would not take this case. The original finding in the next court down that ruled Prop. 8 unconstitutional included federal issues. Yesterday's in contrast was so state-specific that the SCOTUS would be hard pressed to justify hearing it.
The SF Chronicle has the history of CA SSM, as well as reaction to the new ruling here. The LA Times covers the dissenting justice's pretty lame waffling on why there maybe could be a sort of justification for forbidding SSM.
I don't have access to the whole ruling yet, but papers do and are quoting the majority opinion by Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt to include:
There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted...All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage,’...Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.Just so.
I bet the anti-gay/anti-marriage equality sorts appeal to the larger 9th-Circuit Court and delay the inevitable. The only amusement with it is that the narrow Prop. 8 win would not happen today. Voters poll strongly in favor of SSM. The nasties lose this one sooner or later.
Tags: massmarrier, same sex marriage, marriage equality, Ninth Circuit, Court of Appeals, stay
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