On May 15th, the California Supreme Court overturned Proposition 22, the recently passed bill that declared, “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid.” The majority of justices said in no uncertain terms that anything less than full marriage rights, including civil unions, was an unconstitutional slight against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered couples:
“Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” George wrote for the majority. “An individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.”
Unfortunately, the bigoted zeal from fundamentalists hell-bent on limiting marriage rights keeps burning as hot as the hell they think gay people will someday fry in. Christian-leaning organizations such as protectmarriage.com, which sponsored the Limit to Marriage amendment to the state constitution, have gathered up enough signatures to get it on the November 4th ballot, where only a slim majority is necessary to pass it into ineffable law and supersede the Supreme Court decision.
And if that’s not mean enough, they’ve even hinted that they’ll try to prevent gay marriages between now and the November vote. On June 15, the Court’s overturning of Proposition 22 will take effect, allowing gays to legally marry in California—unless there is a “stay” on the decision. And guess what the Limit to Marriage crowd has to say about that:
It is likely that legal representation for ProtectMarriage.com will seek a stay in order to allow the people to vote before same-sex “marriages” take place.
Most Californians see law in a similar manner to how the rest of the country does—we love to ban things but don’t necessarily like to strip away rights that are currently being enjoyed. The anti-gay agenda knows that if they can prevent gay couples from marrying between now and November, they’ll have a much better chance of getting people to cast their ballots against hypothetical marriages. Voting for invalidating thousands of existing, happy, loving same-sex marriages is something most of us would be hesitant to do, so the anti-gay coalition will stop at nothing to delay those marriages. Here’s hoping Ellen and Portia don’t let themselves get steamrolled on their way to the altar.
Update: The L.A. Weekly did a great report today on this story. They kicked my ass in the research department.