Will the same-sex marriages haters risk a ruling that will affect the whole nation?

Today, the ruling on the prop 8 trial will be announced. The same-sex marriage haters have already filed a motion for a stay of the decision pending appeal if the case is going to be ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Based on the specifics of the motion wording, you can bet it is a win for US!

So, appeal. The current ruling ONLY affects California, and leaves the rest of the country out of the loop. A loss at the appeal court would widen this to a loss for a whole range of states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. and of course, if they appeal it to the US supreme court, it would affect the whole nation.

So, if they want to slow down how many states (have to) recognize same-sex marriages, they would be far better of to not appeal and give away California. Why? There case was a disaster. At the appeals court, they cannot bring new arguments. So, the case will be decided pretty much based on what is now on the record. And that record is, well, shitty at least. Maybe better to qualify it as non-existing.

So, what would be the alternative? Let it stand. Throw California under the train and move on. Because this means that if another gay couple in one of the other states of the union finally wants to be treated as a full citizen, they have to start their own case. With their own lawyer, their own witnesses etc. And this gives the haters one MAJOR opportunity. Time to prepare themselves better. To have real experts. And maybe they will be lucky to find a judge who is more activist and willing to impose his own conservative dogma on the case.

Of course, some day, some case will reach the US supreme court. It can be sooner if they appeal now, or maybe later if they take the loss of one state and try to build a more solid case in the next court battle. The later would be a better strategy, because it they get more favorable evidence into the records, they actually will have a higher change of winning when they finally reach the US supreme court.

But rest assured, they won't be this smart. If their performance at the trial is a indicator, they are so convinced they are right that they are willing to risk it all, just to be right! You almost would think they are actually in favor of same-sex marriage.

And because of that, we have to thank them for helping our cause. So, please, file an appeal and help us to finally ride this country of a grave injustice!

California supreme court: Marriage is just a word

Marriage for gay couples seems to be ended in California, but it seems that the justices take hat VERY narrowly, namely meaning just the word marriage. They pretty much explicitly say that gays should have the same rights, and that no form of discrimination is allowed. Or as justice Kennard, one of the two swing voters indicated:

She reminded lawyers that the "core" part of last year's marriage ruling required the state to give sexual orientation the same constitutional protection as race and gender.

Proposition 8 "hasn't destroyed equal protection," Kennard said.

So, here we go again, do we want the same rights, or do we want the same term? I think the gay movement in this country is loosing ground by requiring that we get the same term and the same rights, because much of the opposition has to do with the term. Many religious people see marriage as a sacred term, and just for that purpose, they object to it. So, by choosing for equal rights, and give the term marriage to the religious for the time being, we can improve dramatically in our rights. As soon as we have our rights, we can argue that the term marriage should be taken out of the legal system because it is a violation of the separation between church and state, but that is a fight we can fight later.

It is time that someone asks for the same rights from the Californian government without wanting to use the word marriage, and see what the justices of the supreme court rule. One willing municipality (San Francisco?) who make a move towards and it might be quickly enough resolved. As long as we want to have rights to the word Marriage, we are loosing this battle. (Now I duck and run for the anger this provokes from my fellow gay activists)