Federal Appeals Court rules Prop 8 Unconstitutional

[Esper]

Alternatively, I think the "civil union" stuff from about a decade ago was a step in the right direction, but it was insufficient. If we referred to the legal status of joining to be a "civil union" in ALL cases and separated it from the religious status of "marriage," that might be sufficient. In this case, "marriage" would hold no legal significance and have no legal restrictions; it would be left up to the individual religious institutions to decide whether to grant the status. I don't know if it would solve all the problems (probably not), but I can't think of anything immediately wrong.

That would run into problems where existing laws, and even things like company policies and so on, would have the word "marriage" written in them and not "civil union." It would just be cleaner to have everything stay as "marriage" and allow people to marry.

 

[-ty-]

As always, I think that much of this discussion has been off-topic. The definition of a bigot has little to do with this news; it's just a distracting semantics war.

The points brought up about whether or not it is "right" or "moral" to be anti-gay marriage are the ones that count. First off, gay people have every right to be upset when others are avidly against their rights. Marriage is both a religious, societal, and financial right. This business that gay people are just as bad for pressing their beliefs and agendas on to others is false. Gay people would be equivocal to proponents of prop 8 if they too wished to ban heterosexual marriages. Imagine if gay people did that, wouldn't you be upset if they succeeded? Wouldn't you say that their beliefs intrude upon your beliefs?

Too many of us take what we have for granted. I know that I do, but at least I recognize when I am doing so, and try to put myself in others shoes before I judge them.

 

[Virtual Chatot]

>All this proves is that normal Californians don't want it but the Federal bureaucracy is going to push it through anyways.

 

[Esper]

>All this proves is that normal Californians don't want it but the Federal bureaucracy is going to push it through anyways.

1) The federal government is not involved in this. It's the courts following the regular appeals process.
2) 59% of California voters support gay marriage, [source] although honestly you shouldn't be able to put civil rights up for a popular vote anyway since that makes it very easy for minorities' rights to be trampled all over.

So to say that the federal government is pushing something on an unwilling population is simply untrue.