Schwarzenegger: Courts should decide Prop 8 suit

Source: Associated Press

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says a federal lawsuit challenging California's gay marriage ban poses a valid legal question that should be decided by the courts.

Schwarzenegger's position came in a court filing Tuesday in response to the lawsuit filed on behalf of two unmarried same-sex couples who want to overturn Proposition 8.

Heading the legal team for the couples are famed attorneys David Boies and Theodore Olson, who opposed each other in the 2000 presidential election challenge.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/06/16/state/n151804D45.DTL&tsp=1

A 'valid question'?

That's not a position. It's not even an opinion. It's an evasion.

the "people have spoken" and that the courts should not get involved.

The bottom line is that nobody ever got civil rights by referendum. Gays and us who love them were naive if we ever imagined that good will was just going to overtake things to the point that a majority vote would get them equal protection under the law. The people who spent fortunes getting prop 8 passed are the grandkids of people who didn't want to share their water fountains and schools with the Brown. Desegregation took the courts to enact, and a whole mob of national guardsmen armed to the teeth, to enforce. And gay is the new black. Gay marriage the new Segregation. It's nice that states like Iowa and wherever are making enough headway in popular opinion to make statement, but it's not going to do the trick. And it's not a States Rights issue, any more than any under Equal Protection issue is.

civil rights can NOT be decided by popular vote.

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Loving vs Virginia? How is marriage not part of the array of civil rights?

And wouldn't the USSC trump CA's referendum?

First of all California does not have a "civil unions" statute. Secondly, the CA Supreme Court did rule that marriage is a fundamental right (a fundmental civil right) in the CA Marriage Ruling. Prop 8 carves a narrow exception to the equal protection clause, denying this fundamental civil right to gays and lesbians. This is all very clear.

The Supreme Court's Loving v VA decision, and a number of others since then, have made that clear.

As for zealots, which ones are you talking about in Prop 8? The ones who actively worked to strip a civil right from a group of people? Or are you talking about the ones who were defending a civil right?

The legislature could dissolve all such unions tomorrow if they so chose.

But as long as a type of legal partnership called "marriage" exists, then we do have the Civil Right to have it applied without discrimination. Constitutionally the government has no more right to impose gender limitations for marriage than they do for incorporation, etc.

and then after years of struggling to have the same rights as everyone else, we call you a zealot.

Thanks to the 14th Amendment, you can't give one group of citizens a right like marriage and refuse to extend it to another group.

You're absolutely, totally wrong.

If you don't support our equal right to marry, per the admins you're not welcome -- except to get the fuck off DU.

that he was confident that gay marriage would eventually be legalized in California. He has done a complete 180 from the days when he sided with the right wing on the issue. Hopefully Obama will come around as well.

:shrug:

Either way, it's all about the butter.

:popcorn:

Bizarre!



http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/05/27/2009-05-27_theodore_olson_and_david_boies_lawyers_on_opposing_sides_of_bush_v_gore_teams_up.html