Yes, unless overturned by a court. They may not have an effective date of the day after election, but once their effective date passes, they are law.
And as Bricker pointed out, this is no mere “initiative” subject to judicial challenge, this is an amendment to the California Constitution.
Depends. The legislature and courts have to figure out how to implement it, and one of the problems with Prop 8 is that it doesn’t deal with the marriages that have already taken place.
In Florida, an Amendment requires 60% to pass. In CA, only a simple majority is required, which is why CA has about 999,999 amendments.
This is the real problem with Prop 8, and I don’t think enough people really understood this. I heard this morning that there are already legal challenges in the works, but they will just be looking for loopholes. Barring anything like that, the only way this can be overturned at this point is if
a) we add another amendment reversing prop 8
b) this goes to a national level and the SCOTUS holds that same sex marriage is constitutionally protected.
I don’t see either of those things happening in the next 50 years or so.
This is a huge blow and I am ashamed to be a Californian today.
I’m still confused at the identity of this shadowy “pretender” I keep hearing about. For my part, I have no need to pretend; I freely admit that gay marriage is not the absolute paramount, deal-killer issue driving my political decision-making. I do support gay marriage, however, and if given the chance would gladly vote down a proposition like California’s or Florida’s, and would gladly vote for a contrary measure codifying marriage rights.
I lament that your write-in campaign was unsuccessful, Ensign, and inasmuch as I contributed to your crushing defeat by voting for someone actually likely to win and effect positive change (or at a minimum, likely to do the least harm), well----I really can’t tell you how sorry I am.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go bask in the brief, cooling afterglow of yesterday’s victory.
Perhaps next time you should try reading the conversation you’re participating in. My responses were intended for jayjay and anyone else who claims there is “no disconnect”, as below in this very thread:
Also, your assumption that I wasn’t also someone who thought the compromise necessary clearly demonstrates that you’ve missed my point entirely.
Nice to know some people are still ‘separate but equal.’ Truly a bittersweet day.
What makes you think it won’t?
In two years, there won’t be a presidential election, which means all the casual bigots won’t be out voting. In two years, that many more old homophobes will have died off and that many more young people will be old enough to vote.
I say put it back on the ballot until we win.
Where’s the equal part?
You put a lot of words in my mouth to argue with there. I hope at least you had some fun. What I said was that casting this in terms of other issues being “more important” is over-simplistic, so you . . . then post a quote again casting this in terms of other issues being more important.
But everything you said insists on casting it in terms of being a compromise, in terms of ordering every single issue on some big scale of importance, so that any move towards something is a move away from something else. I see no justification for such obsessively linear thinking when we are talking about non-linear concepts.
A lot of the push for gay marriage is legal. If your partner is sick and in the hospital ,you are not allowed to make decisions about treatment. The closest person in the patients life is shut out.
If the person dies ,their money would go to their closest legal relative instead of the person they shared a life with. That person may suddenly be in serious financial jeopardy.
What, exactly, is your point? Your asinine posts haven’t been making any sense. The best that I can parse is that you think someone can’t logically be both a Prop. 8 opponent and an Obama supporter?
Obama’s stance that it is wrong to take drastic measures, such as constitutional amendments, in order to take away rights from one group of citizens makes his privately-held beliefs pretty fucking close to irreverent. In any case, only you seem to be so stupid as to think that we aren’t aware of the individual policy differences that, in the end, did not outweigh the rest of the reasons we voted for our chosen candidate.
Not really in California though. We already have civil unions with equal rights under the law. This was about making sure that same sex couples couldn’t say that they were married. It’s petty and small minded.
It could be worse, we could have voted down the ability for unmarried couples to adopt children like they did in Arkansass.
The fact that I am taking solice in California being just a touch more progressive than Arkansass is really sad though.
I’m not so sure. Young voters aren’t going for this shit. 50 years ago homosexuality was illegal and considered a psychiatric disorder. Stonewall hadn’t happened. No countries recognized same-sex marriage. There were no out politicians. There were no positive depictions of LGB people in mainstream media. There were no companies with domestic partner benefits. There were no states with hospital visitation rights. “Sexual orientation” wasn’t in anybody’s non-discrimination statement. Even in the 70’s, a psychiatrist who was advocating for the removal of homosexuality from the DSM testified with his face covered for fear of losing his license. Hang in there.
Question:
Would marriages from other states be recognized under California law? As I understand it, before prop 8 they would have been. But I am not sure if prop 8 changes that.
I must say, if we step back and look at the way things were ten years ago, LGBT equality has come a million miles in what amounts to just seconds of political time.
I remember when the Lawrence (Texas) verdict was released, and everybody was astonished. I distinctly remember that the opinion made a point of saying “this doesn’t mean gay marriage is okay, you know!”
At the time, I thought, “well, you guys had better be ready to discuss that, because it’s going to be on the table in thirty years!”
Cold comfort to those affected by this, I know, but things have progressed faster than anyone thought possible.
Heck, I’m only 26 years old, and I quite clearly remember how deviant and evil homosexuality was considered to be when I was a kid - and this was in Britain, where even the Church of England thumps its bibles softly, if at all.
Some of the more ‘enlightened’ anti-gay marriage proponents insist civil unions would be just like marriages but with different names. There was a great GD about it a few months back.
This is where the new battle will be, especially since this initiative was written & funded by out-of-state conservative interests. There has GOT to be a legal violation here, somewhere. And even if there isn’t, the people WILL revolt. Plain and simple.
I’m not “currently” gay (more like I’m 1.5 on the Kinsey Scale), but there’s a non-zero chance that this decision may affect my future. And I’m fucking PISSED about this amendment. There are others who are far more pissed & likely to incite revolt than I am – California is the “Gay Mecca”, so imagine how muslims would react if Saudi Arabia passed a law banning the worship of Mohammed? It’s exactly like that.
Ensign Edison, you are making an elementary error here. There is no compromise in voting against Prop 8 and for Obama. Your mistaken premise is your belief that a vote for a politician is a vote for everything he or she believes. This is false. It is at most a vote for everything he or she believes about what the government should and should not do. Since Obama believes that the government should not prevent SSM, a vote for Obama is a vote for that.
Every citizen of Saudi Arabia is a Muslim, except for a handful who are married to Muslims or enjoy extremely unusual government patronage.
Every citizen of California is not gay. Bit different.
I’m so sorry for every Californian who voted against this hateful measure and lost. I’m sorry for all the couples who’ve already married who’ve been slapped in the face by this and whose marital status is now in doubt. Truly, after having seen the joyous weddings over the past months it’s inconceivable to me that any feeling person could deny that joy to another simply based on the sex of their equally joyous spouse. If nothing else I seriously expected that the lobbying from all those who derive their income from the wedding business would’ve outweighed the religious propaganda–who in the world could turn down the business of all those happy gay couples? I’m equally sorry for those who bought the bullshit of the pro-Prop 8 supporters who might otherwise have no issue with SSM, however I sure hope a large number of them wake up one morning saying “What the fuck did I just do?”
If it helps any, please accept the example of my twelve year old grandson. He’s in middle school now, and there are quite a few kids in his school who already identify as gay, who “go with” each other just as openly as their hetero friends, who have their PDA moments in the halls and on the playground and none of the other kids thinks a thing of it. It is absolutely inconceivable to them that some of their friends should be denied their expressions of love, up to and including marriage and having kids, and the attitudes of the adults who’re opposed to SSM are just a headscratcher to these kids. They’re not alone, by any means, and they’ll be voting in just a few short years along with millions of their compatriots. In those same few short years a whole lot of old, calcified fucks will also die and good riddance to them. Your time will come, I’m sure of it. This is a gut blow, but not a death blow. Keep fighting, keep bringing this to the courts, keep fighting this out in the court of public opinion and one day we shall all overcome–prejudice in all its forms is an ugly thing and I think it’s high time we get done with it…
Oh, and Ensign Edison, here’s a quote for you:
Your pathetic wibbling and nitpicking is inappropriate in this thread–don’t you have something else to do, like kicking some puppies or eviscerating cute little hamsters? Just fuck off, will you, and let the rest of us have our mourning and disappointment.