Skip to main content

Proposition 8 Upheld - A Quick Roundup

The California Supreme Court decided on May 26th to uphold Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage throughout the state.

Only one of the 7 Judges voted against the proposition. His dissent, together with the full decision, can be read here (Daily Kos).

Strangely (and in my view illogically, a viewed shared by a legal commentator in the LA Times here
), the judges agreed unanimously not to annul the 18,000 same-sex marriages that took place between July and November 2008.

Thousands of people have been marching in protest against the decision, across the USA and about 200 people (including religious people) have been arrested. Meanwhile, resistance is getting organised. There are talk of submitting a new proposition annulling Proposition 8 at the 2010 Californian elections and the Advocate explains how Proposition 8 is already about to get challenged at the Federal level, here.

Several commentators manage to find the silver lining in today's cloud. Mark Morford in the San Francisco Chronicle, thinks that the enemies of gay marriage have already lost, while Dan Savage, in the Seattle Stranger, thinks that we are winning.

Click on the image above for a History of the History of Gay Marriage Bans in the US.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Short History of the Elephant and Castle and Its Name

Last night I attended a lecture by local historian Stephen Humphrey who discussed the general history of the Elephant & Castle, focussing more particularly on what he called its heyday (between 1850 and 1940). This is part of a week-long art project ( The Elephant Project ) hosted in an empty unit on the first floor of the infamous shopping centre, aiming to chart some of the changes currently happening to the area. When an historian starts talking about the Elephant and Castle, there is one subject he can not possibly avoid, even if he wanted to. Indeed my unsuspecting announcement on Facebook that I was attending such talk prompted a few people to ask the dreaded question: Where does the name of the area come from, for realz? Panoramic view of the Elephant and Castle around 1960/61. Those of us less badly informed than the rest have long discarded the theory that the name comes from the linguistic deformation of "Infanta de Castille", a name which would have become at

Rev. Peter Mullen's Blog

Rev. Peter Mullen is the chaplain to the London Stock Exchange and the rector of St Michael's Cornhill and St Sepulchre without Newgate in the City. Rev. Peter Mullen was also until recently a blogger. Sadly the result of his cyber labour seem to have been deleted but Google has thankfully cached some of it and I have saved a copy for posterity, just in case. The deletion of Rev. Mullen's writings might just have something to do with the fact that last week, the Evening Standard and then the Daily Mail published an article (the same article actually) about some of those very writings (even though the elements of said writings being quoted had been published in June this year, at the time of the blessing ceremony which took place between two members of the Church of England in St Bartholomew the Great - picture ). In the article, we learned what the Rev. thinks about gay people and what should be done to them: We ["Religious believers"] disapprove of homosexuality

Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison Swap Jerseys

I am having a bit of a vacuous evening looking at images of pretty rugby players. Addidas, with its latest viral campaign, Jersey Swap , seems to be squarely aiming at the gay market with a selection of five antipodean rugby players, visitor to the website can select and see take their tops off and... well... swap jersey (those interested can create posters too). My favorites of the bunch are Liam Messam and Tamati Ellison . The pictures of their pretty faces and bulging naked torsos (excuse me while I sit down for a second!) included to this post should tell you why. A job well done for Addidas. This will go round the Internet for a while, I think.