Trinopus:
Bricker : You’re wrong. Something like that was tried in San Francisco, and, while many celebrated the spirit of the effort, even many gay rights activists conceded that it exceeded the mayor’s authority and could not be supported.
Your effort to tar the opposition with the brush of hypocrisy is a mega fail here. We have our ideals, but “due process of law” is one we don’t set aside trivially.
Not true. Many people here supported same-sex marriage as something that should be done regardless of the clear spirit of the law opposing it. Gavin Newsome’s specific effort garnered support here:
It’s amazing how incredibly TIRED I am to keep hearing “backlash backlash backlash backlash” as if it were a credible argument for forbearance in demanding our rights. If the American public is still so unprepared for full equality for gays and lesbians that they’re capable of being stampeded, like cattle, into fits of gaybashing, verbal abuse of queers, and the removal of what rights we have managed to wrest from their greedy little hands, then the American public doesn’t deserve to have gay folk among them, and I advocate a mass exodus to Canada or Europe if such a thing were to happen.
I’m sure if the “backlash” were to come to pass, homosexuality would be an asylum condition for emigration from the US into more enlightened and modern countries.
Well, what do you know. Gay people are married in the US. And heterosexual marriages… dissolve? Explode? Combust?
Nope. The structure of marriage, the fabic of marriage, the institution of marriage, the sanctity of marriage… they’re all intact. All that’s happened is that more people can now participate.
For this reason, I think this is a massive step in the right direction. People need to see the reality of gay marriage, as opposed to the bizarre apocalyptic visions they’ve been constructing in their heads. The reality is pedestrian; two little old ladies, who’ve been together for half a century, who can now say that they’re married.
It’s a great day.
From Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail :
So there is no reason, IMHO, to wait for the “majority” to catch up. An unjust law, a difference made legal , is immoral, and we are not obligated to obey it.
I love the fact that those two women, who had been together 51 years, were allowed to marry. Can you imagine how excited they must have been? They got to get married for before they died, and that is a beautiful thing.
Yes, this is civil disobedience. Civil disobedience by an elected official, which carries even more weight. I think the comparison to Martin Luther King, Jr. (who, whatever his failings, was not a brat ;)) is appropriate.
The only way to challenge an unconstitutional law is to break it. There must be a real case on which the court can base their decision. The Mayor (and the women who married) may suffer consequences, but they did what he believed to be the just and right thing.
I have always believed that forbidding gay people to marry is immoral and unjust, and today I am proud to live in a city whose public officials are willing to take a stand against injustice.
Besides, there’s just something beautiful about two women who have been together for 51 years finally being able to marry.
I was down at SF City Hall today and watched some of the USA’s first government-sanctioned same-sex marriages. It was an impromptu, but exciting and beautiful event. The news spread by cell phone and email. Fearful of the coming injunctions, couples started rushing to City Hall when they heard the news. Most did not even bother to change into fancier clothes – couples lined up for simple impromptu weddings, often in their street clothes and tennis shoes. None of these couples woke up today with the knowledge that they would be getting married later today and making history. There were no protestors against the equal marriages; everyone present was happy and supportive.
I know there’s going to be a backlash, injunctions, lawsuits, and constitutional amendments headed to the ballots. No matter which course we take, some resistence is inevitable. That doesn’t mean we can’t or won’t fight, however. I am absolutely convinced this was the right thing to do. Irrational and hateful discrimination is immoral. I applaud Gavin Newsom for doing what was simply the right, and only thing to do (I’m not normally a fan of Newsom – I voted against him and worked on the campaign of his opponent. But in this case he’s done the right thing and I support him 100% on this issue).
But I do think having gay marriages on some books, even illegally, does get us something. Suddenly we have the family values crowd trying to break up people’s marriages. That’s a pretty powerful irony that the gay rights crowd can and should play to the hilt.
The only way to challenge a law in court is to break it, and sue when you’re not allowed to. You can’t just go to the court and say “We’d like to do this, will you let us?” because that’s a hypothetical situation and hypotheticals are not justiciable in most states. The Mayor of San Francisco, beliving that the law in question violates the California Constitution, elected to break the law in order to challenge it.
This is exactly civil disobedience by the Mayor and those in agreement with him, against a statute the Mayor believes to be in violation of the California Constitution; if he’s right, the law is a nullity. He is putting himself and his career on the line for this. And you have the gall to chastize him for upholding his conviction as to what the law of his state actually requires?
An interracial couples getting “married” used to be a willfull and deliberate violation of the law in many States also. If you were around during that time, and the mayor of a town in one of those states handed out marriage licenses to interracial couples would you have suggested to those couples that they elect not to get “married”?
John Mace and emarkp were the minority in speaking up for the law over the mayor’s action.