CA Supreme Court decision
May. 26th, 2009 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
msagaraI pretty much expected it. I was ready for it. This is what I told myself last night, when I finally went to sleep.
But I am thoroughly depressed by what I, in theory, expected, so obviously I had silently hoped for a different result. I don't live in the US, and I don't live in CA. I live in Ontario, in Canada, where gay marriage is a simple fact of both law and daily life. Prior to the advent of legal marriage for gays, I knew a number of people whose SO's were in the hospital dying of AIDS -- and who were denied the ability to be with their SO's in their last days because of the narrow-minded and ultimately evil (really, truly, imho) decisions of the rest of their family, even though, right up until the point that hospitalization was required, they were the ones who were physically caring for them -- a right that could not be denied a legal spouse.
Pointing to the ways in which a "separate but equal" commitment does not detract from daily life misses that single point. Think about it: If your SO's mother is denying you all access to her son because you aren't kin, how exactly, in CA, are you going to prove that you have the right to access? What are you going to say to the hospital staff? You can argue that you are, in fact, legally entitled to visit and to be there -- but what are you pulling out of your pockets to drop on the staff's desk? When you are already reeling in shock and pain, how are you building up your bureaucratic arsenal to be there to comfort the dying -- and to gain, for yourself, possibly the last hours you will ever have with the living?
No cut-tags here, because, honestly? CA, I do not get it. I understand the ways in which the Supreme Court was hampered -- but they should never have been hampered that way in the first place. To those who voted for prop 8: I don't understand your fear. I don't understand your bigotry. I don't understand your hatred. No one is telling you what to do. No one is telling you who to marry. Or who to sleep with. No one is pointing their mocking teen-age fingers at you and calling you gay. Okay? (I may, at this point, be calling you a whole host of other things, but my fury is not entrenched in law.)
It is not as if the lesbian and gay communities are asking for something outrageous. They are not asking for your jobs, your homes, your children, or your money; they're not demanding equal sexual time with you or your spouse; they're not trying to secede. What horrible and agitating thing are they struggling to achieve? They want to get married. Wow. That's it. They want to be able to get married. I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around why this is considered so ultimately terrifying because if you actually unpack the fear... there's not a lot there. They want the chance, in front of friends, family, and their entire community, to put their money where their mouth is: to make the public commitment.
I am, absent obvious racial characteristics, as middle-of-the-road as one gets. I am married, I have two children, I have a mortgage. My husband works full-time; I work part-time and write. I hate housework. My parents are in and out of my house all week. I am not writing from any radical fringe or any radical mode of thought. My marriage, and my family, are not lessened by gay marriage; they are more threatened by a society that continues to attempt to entrench bigotry in its constitution. I understand bigotry. I know what my parents lost--as children--in the internment camps of the second world war. I know what their parents lost, as adults with families they couldn't even keep together, so I understand bigotry. I understand the costs.
There is enough loneliness and unhappiness in life that denying people the chance at a public, successful marriage seems petty, small, cruel. Will all of the marriages survive? Probably not; many marriages don't. But the profound hope and promise of the beginning is one of the ways one gets through the storms and the upheavals. We promised. It was witnessed. It meant something. Denying people this happiness and this hope just spreads misery and isolation.
Please, do not do this. Do not continue to do this.
But I am thoroughly depressed by what I, in theory, expected, so obviously I had silently hoped for a different result. I don't live in the US, and I don't live in CA. I live in Ontario, in Canada, where gay marriage is a simple fact of both law and daily life. Prior to the advent of legal marriage for gays, I knew a number of people whose SO's were in the hospital dying of AIDS -- and who were denied the ability to be with their SO's in their last days because of the narrow-minded and ultimately evil (really, truly, imho) decisions of the rest of their family, even though, right up until the point that hospitalization was required, they were the ones who were physically caring for them -- a right that could not be denied a legal spouse.
Pointing to the ways in which a "separate but equal" commitment does not detract from daily life misses that single point. Think about it: If your SO's mother is denying you all access to her son because you aren't kin, how exactly, in CA, are you going to prove that you have the right to access? What are you going to say to the hospital staff? You can argue that you are, in fact, legally entitled to visit and to be there -- but what are you pulling out of your pockets to drop on the staff's desk? When you are already reeling in shock and pain, how are you building up your bureaucratic arsenal to be there to comfort the dying -- and to gain, for yourself, possibly the last hours you will ever have with the living?
No cut-tags here, because, honestly? CA, I do not get it. I understand the ways in which the Supreme Court was hampered -- but they should never have been hampered that way in the first place. To those who voted for prop 8: I don't understand your fear. I don't understand your bigotry. I don't understand your hatred. No one is telling you what to do. No one is telling you who to marry. Or who to sleep with. No one is pointing their mocking teen-age fingers at you and calling you gay. Okay? (I may, at this point, be calling you a whole host of other things, but my fury is not entrenched in law.)
It is not as if the lesbian and gay communities are asking for something outrageous. They are not asking for your jobs, your homes, your children, or your money; they're not demanding equal sexual time with you or your spouse; they're not trying to secede. What horrible and agitating thing are they struggling to achieve? They want to get married. Wow. That's it. They want to be able to get married. I'm having trouble wrapping my mind around why this is considered so ultimately terrifying because if you actually unpack the fear... there's not a lot there. They want the chance, in front of friends, family, and their entire community, to put their money where their mouth is: to make the public commitment.
I am, absent obvious racial characteristics, as middle-of-the-road as one gets. I am married, I have two children, I have a mortgage. My husband works full-time; I work part-time and write. I hate housework. My parents are in and out of my house all week. I am not writing from any radical fringe or any radical mode of thought. My marriage, and my family, are not lessened by gay marriage; they are more threatened by a society that continues to attempt to entrench bigotry in its constitution. I understand bigotry. I know what my parents lost--as children--in the internment camps of the second world war. I know what their parents lost, as adults with families they couldn't even keep together, so I understand bigotry. I understand the costs.
There is enough loneliness and unhappiness in life that denying people the chance at a public, successful marriage seems petty, small, cruel. Will all of the marriages survive? Probably not; many marriages don't. But the profound hope and promise of the beginning is one of the ways one gets through the storms and the upheavals. We promised. It was witnessed. It meant something. Denying people this happiness and this hope just spreads misery and isolation.
Please, do not do this. Do not continue to do this.
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no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 07:51 pm (UTC)I am sick with disappointment and disgust. My one hope is that, in preserving the rights of those 18,000 marriages already made, the state, and the legislature will eventually come to see that the sky did not fall. Further, the idiocy of 18,000 having civil rights shared by non gay couples, and the tragedy of those who do not have the same civil rights, will create awareness.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 07:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 08:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 08:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 08:14 pm (UTC)What is the matter with the people who are so bent on denying other human beings the right to that kind of joy? I am very disappointed at the decision. VERY. I thought better of California.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 08:48 pm (UTC)-T
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 10:52 pm (UTC)I heard a rumor about a petition circulating to put this issue of legal vs. religious marriages on the ballot as an initiative, but I have yet to find someone circulating said petition. You'd think in SF they'd be papering the sidewalks with it but I haven't seen anything yet. I'll sign if I can track someone down.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 03:23 am (UTC)There was an argument trotted out by the religious bigots during the campaign for Prop 8 that basically went, "We gave you civil unions, that should be good enough!" And I agree with them. Civil unions should be good enough for EVERYONE. =P Since they essentially confer all the legal benefits of being "married", let us take the state out of "marriages" entirely. Everyone gets civil unions and let's just be done with it. If you wanna have a ceremony in a church, that's fine and dandy, but there had better not be any legal documents signed while you're there. I think of them all very much as petulant children who don't want to have to share their toys, so you know what? No toys for you.
Those people can keep their sacraments in their churches that keep the gays out so long as their keep their bigotry and hatred and religion out of my secular government and laws!
Plus, I've never really understood the argument that allowing gay people to marry would destroy the sanctity of marriage. Straight people have already done that just fine on their own, without anyone else's help. =P
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 09:01 pm (UTC)I live here, and I don't get it either. It really makes me physically ill just to think about.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 09:14 pm (UTC)Laws of necessity ensure that we can function as a society without killing each other, and ensure the gov't runs smoothly. They cover things like assault, what side of the road to drive on, collection of taxes, at what age you're considered an adult, ect.
Laws of morality cover things like who has the right to marry, how many wives/husbands you're allowed, what sexual practices are acceptable, ect.
As far as I'm concerned, the gov't, or anybody else for that matter, has no business legislating laws of morality. As long as it's between freely consenting adults, stay out of it. It doesn't matter whether I agree with the morality of it or not. If it doesn't involve me or mine, then my opinion shouldn't matter.
*Obviously it's never quite so easy, and some of these laws will overlap or may be difficult to decide which category they belong in.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 09:23 pm (UTC)It's a very sad day, I really wish that had turned out differently. :(
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 09:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 10:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 11:03 pm (UTC)It makes so much sense.
I'm in CA and the Prop 8 issue spoiled any joy I may have had after the elections. It makes me sick (I can feel it in the pit of my stomach... good thing I don't have ulcers!).
The Knights of Columbus and the Mormon Church outspent nearly everyone to run all kinds of ads right at the end, totally fear-mongering about how Churches would be sued and schools would be forced to teach young kids that they could marry their own sex--and what's wrong with that??? The End of Human Decency and Western Civilization, apparently.
And I was getting recorded phone messages using Obama's words about not being for gay marriage, which was disenheartening.
And apparently there were many churches preaching from their pulpits about how everyone must go out and vote Yes on 8 (or was it No? There was that issue that made it confusing, too).
Everyone has the idea that California is the Hollywood elite or the liberals of San Francisco, but large parts of the state are small towns, rural areas and even large parts of suburbia that are still quite conservative. I mean, come on, where did Nixon and Reagan come from???
There are huge numbers of church-goers here who are Social Conservatives and while they may have been all for Obama, they were also listening to their churches and voting against the Gay, Liberal Agenda (of godless, decadent, sinful types).
They will say they are not bigoted at all, that they love their gay friends and children, but that marriage is sacred and something of God.
The issue of Marriage needs to be, in that case, taken out of the State's hands and left to the Church. All things that have to do with civil rights and status and taxes and such needs to be Civil Unions--for everyone, equally. I think that was part of what the justices were hinting at in the ruling. That, OK, "Marriage" was limited to women and men only... but that doesn't mean the inequalities shouldn't be address as far as all the rest goes. So it becomes a thing of terminology. ... I SO hope that that angle can be worked on here, ASAP--to take out the religious aspects as far as the State and National laws go.
There will be protesting. I should probably go and show support. And other plans--another proposition on the ballot.
The vote was at some time heading in favor of same-sex marriage before all the outside groups and churches pushed things. And I KNOW trends are going in the correct direction. I had so hoped we all were more ready and receptive to do what is right, but people are slow, slow, slow to change on these kinds of issues. Bigotry is very common, sadly, whether it's rationalized or hidden or outright...
I guess we can just keep trying and working on it.
(Thank goodness those who were married weren't stripped of that, at least.)
no subject
Date: 2009-05-26 11:08 pm (UTC)The Hawaii House passed a civil unions bill, and a certainly cowardly faction within the Senate Democratic leadership TWICE killed the bill via procedural gimmickry. They have the votes, but the opposition is well funded and very very vocal.
I suspect that, given the current political situation in the USA, that them who lost the 2008 election, and especially the hard core religious conservatives who surely sense themselves to be fighting a losing battle long term (see: Sodom and Gomorrah, so they truly believe they are fighting a much more cosmic battle), have picked this as their place to "hold the line." So it's going to be brutal. But. Not soon enough, time and tide will come down in our favor. It's just a shame it's going to take so much longer and be so bitterly fought right down the line.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 12:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 12:38 am (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 01:01 am (UTC)This is the sane and sensible thing to do unless you derive your income, social standing, sense of self, or political power from religious sources; in that case, it calls into question the fundamental legitimacy of at least one, and probably more than one, thing you consider very important.
It's not really about the gay; it's about what the legitimate ways to construct moral authority and social norms are. That's what makes it so bitter on the anti side and so frequently bewildered on the for side, because the anti position -- as Michelle has so eloquently pointed out -- makes absolutely no sense if you consider the question in material terms.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 02:51 am (UTC)The other part of it is showing that it is not morally wrong to allow people of all kinds to make a serious commitment to one another. I'm hoping those rainbow window folks will be able to make some points.
California gets a liberal rep, but it's often undeserved. A lot of the nuttiest and furthest right of the wing-nuts find it perfectly comfortable here, and not just in certain enclaves. As in OR or WA, you can often cut the red/blue thing in any given district by whether it's inland or on the coast, urban or rural.
Okay, I just deleted a vast rant on Orange County, which runs close to Salt Lake City for conservative, wealthy, intolerant, and large...anyway, this state is full of insecure people who long for somebody who has The Word to tell them what to do in uncertain times. Or any time, really. I think of them as jellyfish who lack an internal organizing principle and look to others for the rules.
And guess what? You can make more people like that by insisting on keeping people fearful and isolated as they grow up. What's not to love there? Self-generating organization men, right?
Finally, this is not exactly the triumph that the right wing expected to get, either.
Daily Kos had some very good points they found buried in the tricky language of the court's opinion. You have to bear with it, which of course regular news media so rarely do.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/5/26/735571/-Read-page-36.-They-just-cut-Prop-8-to-the-bone.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 01:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 02:13 am (UTC)Thank you for posting this.
no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 05:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 06:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 11:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-27 01:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-29 05:52 am (UTC)I keep catching myself thinking, 'If Harvey had lived . . .'
CA Supreme Court decision
Date: 2009-05-30 02:12 am (UTC)Re: CA Supreme Court decision
Date: 2009-06-05 03:11 am (UTC)The course of progress means that those people with more liberal attitudes raise voices against what they see as injustice. The fact that half the US at one point wanted slavery does not, for instance, make slavery good because the slaves aren't making the laws; the people who are in power are. And this, to me, is a more subtle version of that: the people who are voting against gay marriage are not the people affected by the vote. The marriages of gay men, and lesbian women, do nothing whatsoever to demean the marriages of anyone else.
If you think every law that's ever been passed by the people in power is good, I invite you to revisit your history. Or ours. If you think every majority vote that has ever been passed should pass without question, I invite you to do the same.
People change. Knowledge changes. Opinions change. It's why women can vote, among other things :P.
Re: CA Supreme Court decision
Date: 2009-06-09 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-05 03:05 am (UTC)I'm all for skipping the sacrament, by the way.
I'm not for excluding people -legally- from the body politic which in theory is not religious, from the civil ceremony known as -- yes! -- marriage.
By all means, if they don't revere your god, they don't have to marry in your Church. They can find someone else's god to revere, and someone else's church to be married in. But they live here, abide by the laws, and, significantly, pay the taxes upon which all of our civil services are in the end based. Given that they are part of society, why should they not benefit from the legal protections of said society?
In other words: the force of civil law should apply to gay couples in exactly the same way it applies to every other couple. If you want to deny them the religious ceremony, if you want to refuse to condone it as a core religious tenet, it's your clubhouse, and I have no problems with that.
But separate out Church and State here. The State should have the right to recognize marriages absent religious attitudes; the Church should not be required to be an avenue for performing those marriages.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-29 01:40 am (UTC)This would completely strip the issue of bizarre and antiquarian religious arguments offered by the fruitcakes who voted against gay marriage.