Prop 8 Overturned!

I know I'm late, but I was on vacation when I heard the news, and no, I didn't have a computer with me. I'm happy to hear about Judge Vaughn Walker's decision that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. I was very unhappy that the original decision to make same-sex marriage legal was subjected to the whims of voters. Just imagine if interracial marriage had been allowed to be challenged in the courts after it became legal (Wow. It's so outside my paradigm for interracial marriage to be illegal that it just seems unreal to me). People may still not like interracial marriage, but I don't think anyone would take seriously a challenge to the legality of interracial marriage after all these years, and I don't think that same-sex marriage should have ever been something left up to voters to decide.

Here's part of Judge Vaughn Walker's decision, from an L.A. Times Article from August 4th.
"Conjecture, speculation and fears are not enough. Still less will the moral disapprobation of a group or class of citizens suffice, not matter how large the majority that shares that view. The evidence demonstrated beyond serious reckoning that Proposition 8 finds support only in such disapproval. As such, Proposition 8 is beyond the constitutional reach of the voters or their representatives."

He makes the case that domestic partnership is not just as good as marriage. If that's so, abolish marriage for straight people also and let us all be joined in civil domestic partnerships rather than holy matrimony. There just are things that are covered by the state of marriage that people outside of your union just will not respect or recognize if you are not married. Married. Remember when Obama made it so that same-sex partners could actually go visit their partners in the hospital? If domestic partnership is "separate but equal" (more civil rights references) -- then why was that necessary? Why were people at the whim of hospital administrators as to whether they could be at the bedside of the person they loved while that person was ill?

There are the weak arguments that same-sex marriage will weaken marriage by increasing divorce. Are you saying that heterosexuals respect marriage more than gays and lesbians would? That's not so. Look at all the heterosexuals who cheat on their husbands and wives. Look at all the divorces that happen now. Those are heterosexual marriages that are failing. Yes, some same-sex marriages will end in divorce, and some same-sex couples have pledged their lives to each other - married or not, and stood by that promise. There are similarly weak arguments that same-sex marriages are bad for children. Children need love. If a same-sex couple can give that child unconditional love, what could be wrong about that? Yes, little girls and boys need to have both male and female influences in their lives. And kids of straight parents where the mother or father is no longer around, be it through divorce, desertion or death, need those influences as well. Some of them get it from other loving, safe and secure adults in their lives, just as the children of same-sex parents can. Since having my own child, I am even more strongly convinced that loving communities help loving parents raise their children.

Not one group, regardless of sexual orientation, nationality, race or belief, is better, more morally correct or incorrect, or more deserving of rights than another. That's what this decision says to me, and with all the faults I have with California, because of this decision, for now, and hopefully on into the future, I can hold my head up and be proud that a judge from my adopted state saw through the b.s.