California’s supreme court ruled that a ban on gay marriage was unlawful Thursday, effectively leaving same-sex couples in America’s most populous state free to tie the knot in a landmark ruling.
In an opinion that analysts say could have nationwide implications for the issue, the seven-member panel voted 4-3 in favor of plaintiffs who argued that restricting marriage to men and women was discriminatory.
“… limiting the designation of marriage to a union ‘between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute,” California Chief Justice Ron George said in the written opinion.
Before Thursday only one US state — Massachusetts — allowed gay marriage, although California, New Jersey and Vermont have legislation which grants same-sex partners many of the same legal rights as married couples.
Thursday’s ruling came after a long-running legal battle that erupted in 2000 when California voters approved a law declaring that only marriages between men and women could be legally recognized.
Read it all and the whole opinion as a PDF document may be found there.
I think it is important to note that the court did not say there was anything wrong with banning gay marriage. The constitutional problem is with the existence of civil unions under California law that are indistinguishable from marriages in every way, and yet refusing to recognize them as marriages. If California’s upcoming initiative were to do away with civil unions (as opposed to what the court refers to as more limited domestic partnerships), it might well be permissible to limit marriage to a man and a woman.
Just because the justices made their ruling doesn’t necessarily mean that the churches have to honor gay “marriage” by blessing it. My own diocese, as most people know, neither permits nor blesses same-sex “marriage.” Nor WILL we. And neither will Rome.
Frear,
So you’d force life partners to testify in court against each other? Prevent them from making medical decisions on each other’s behalf? Allow a surviving spouse to be denied access to a decedent’s estate in the absence of a will or to receive life insurance benefits?
#3 Kevin
With the exception of the first, those issues can be handled legally already.
#3 Precisely what do you mean by “life partners?” Do you mean cohabiting and unmarried? If that’s what y ou mean, then the answer to your first proposition is “Yes,” they can be forced. Why would you object to that?
This is the decision I have been dreading because it carries so much weight, far more than anything Mass. could do. MInd you, having the court so rule is still a violation of the 1st amendment.
Can we assume that THIS one is court to the Supreme Court? I do not see how it can be avoided. In any case, a new element has been added to the political race, and an inflammatory one it is. I am anxious to hear how each of the three answers a direct question concerning this decision. Whatever else this decision may be, it is a catastrophe for us. Giving the Susan Russell’s of America this much legal leverage is the kiss of death. Larry
[url=http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=654]#5: Not to worry, there’s always Plan B…[/url]
“As California goes, so goes the nation.”
#7 – any more fortune cookie wisdom for us?
How can those be married who cannot consummate sexually? Really nobody needs any texts from any Book or books to know the answer to that.
Brian, I simply don’t think that’s true any longer. With the cultural divide ever deepening and so many of us completely disgusted with the “land of fruits and nuts” (long before this ruling, BTW) I think this is just one more move toward an ever widening split.
But the CA ruling will do one thing – it will open more eyes and ears to the only real solution: abandonning marriage all together as a legal institution. Grandfather everyone legally married under their state laws now and move to civil partnerships for all. Marriage is the arena of the church – let the civil contracts be what they will.
#8: I knew The Elves should have set up this blog to underline hyperlinks…
#10: You may find [url=http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=308]this post[/url] of interest, especially the response of the gay Californian (I had debated him earlier.) When God married Adam and Eve, he didn’t need to send them to the courthouse first.
[blockquote]”So you’d force life partners to testify in court against each other?”[/blockquote]
No, I’d force them to testify the truth.
What is this, some sort of game? [i]You get to have a get-out-of-jail free card in your hand, so it’s not fair that I don’t get one in mine[/i]?
Come to your senses, man!! [i]When witnesses cannot be compelled to testify, victims are denied justice[/i]! We’re talking about people getting off for murder! For rape! For stealing people’s life savings!
Why? So that we can have a few Hallmark Card moments with our sex partners??
The Spousal Privilege was not a rule-change intended to make a game fairer, or shorter, or more exciting, or to increase the speed of play or the number of goals made. The Common Law is not Milton Bradley or the NBA, and a court case is not a game.
The Privilege was developed and has been maintained because the grave harm to Justice from undermining a legal action is nevertheless not as grave as the harm to Society of undermining a marriage, [i]the place where children– innocent new citizens– are conceived, born and reared.[/i]
Let’s be clear- [i]the Marital Privilege is a source of injustice and abuse.[/i] We keep it only because the formation of children living with the parents that conceived them is one critical to society.
If marriage does not sound in procreation and is, instead, merely a construction of civil rights inuring to individuals, then it is a grotesque injustice to maintain the Marital Privilege at all.
This is not lost on the courts– not even on the courts of California. By our grandchildren’s day it will be gone altogether.
Ah, by “life partners” I should have written “same-sex spouses.” Let me tell you something, and I’ll only say this once. Our spouses, just like opposite-sex spouses, are more than just “sexual partners.” What is it going to take to get that through to you people?! We’re going to be able to get married now. If you don’t like it, don’t marry someone of the same sex, simple as that.
As for the legal bit, I’d like to see you try to navigate the legal maze (w/ all of its costs) to acquire SOME of the rights and privileges given to opposite-sex spouses.
Of course, you’ve been denying our humanity since the beginning. Why should you stop now? I guess the answer to my first question was “Yes.”
#13, Kevin, there is no legal maze. All it takes to set up the things you are talking about is a simple will and power of attorney for medical decisions. I think you protest too much. Also, I have not heard or seen anyone deny the humanity of a homosexual person … quite the contrary. But homosexual persons have wanted to be more than simple humanity … they have wanted to be special humanity. It appears that the CA Supremes have given them that opportunity, at least until the voters have their say. This decision by the CA Supremes should give the voters all over the country some pause as to whom they want to appoint the next several U.S. Supreme Court Justices.
Kevin, accepting that you are as you say, you must admit you are a tiny minority in the gay community. Even gay Christian leaders advocate open sexuality. E.g. “Fidelity (monogamy?) is not a term we use in the gay community.” (MCC) The late Robert Treat Williams, TEC’s first openly gay ordinand, in his book openly espoused unrestricted sex as just another form of human communication. And there are plenty of studies in and out of gay publications confirming infidelity rates of 90 or even 100%. If you are the rare exception, I applaud you. But you are living in complete denial if you think you are typical. Further confirmation – recall that when Canada legalized gay marriage, only a small % of Canada’s gay couples bothered to take advantage. So yes, it seems clear that gay relationships are categorically different than straight.
[blockquote]Our spouses, just like opposite-sex spouses, are more than just “sexual partners.†[/blockquote]
My point is that sadly same-sex ‘spouses’ are LESS than sexual partners, and always must be, for reasons of basic biology. To institutionalise a nonsense, a form of ‘marriage’ which cannot be consummated, and where non-consummation is and must remain an alien concept, is not even good law, because it makes no sense. That here North of the Line we have succumbed to illogic in this respect does not make the same antics good in a State of the Union.
To be someone’s sexual partner in the real sense of the term is a great good, and is both desired by and proper for the vast majority of grown-up people.
Elves and All,
I underdstand why it is inevitable that “penis”, “vagina”, and “ejaculate” must clog the filter. I hold no grudges and thank you for the work you have volunteered to do, which benefits all.
I have to point out, though, that the words themselves are respectful, clinically accurate, and [i]central to the issue[/i]. It seems to be in the natural unfolding of events in Man’s history that we now find ourselves at a time where the Good is held hostage to manners, and not in this matter only.
“So you’d force life partners to testify in court against each other? Prevent them from making medical decisions on each other’s behalf? Allow a surviving spouse to be denied access to a decedent’s estate in the absence of a will or to receive life insurance benefits?”
I live (celebately) with my twin sister and we coparent two adopted children currently aged 17 and 10.
1. Regarding testifying: We believe in telling the truth, and have raised our children to at least give lip service to the concept.
2. My sister holds a durable power of attorney for health care decisions should I become disabled, and I hold a similar power of attorney for her. This takes care of all medical and legal decisions including disposition of finances and removal of ventilators.
3. My sister (or rather her revocable living trust) owns my life insurance policies, and I (via my revocable living trust) owns my sisters life insurance policies.
4. We hold all property jointly in our living trusts, and our various cars, bank accounts etc are automatically “payable on death” to the others revocable living trust.
5. It would be nice not to have to maintain two health insurance plans, however I think the next election will bring us closer to a more rational health insurance system.
6. We will not be able to benefit from the other’s social security earnings, however since I do not believe that social security will be around when I am old enough to benefit from it this does not concern me.
I do not believe it is necessary for California to foist incest on a nation to make sure that our legitimate legal needs are met. If gay couples wish to do their homework they too can have their legitimate legal needs met without insisting that sodomy be foisted on the nation also.
Oh by the way it was not necessary to set up revocable living trusts. We used to just own each other’s life insurance policy outright, and we used to just own our homes as “joint tenants with full rights of survivorship”. However having revocable living trusts is somewhat helpful in asset protection if you are a physician.
We also have living wills.
The key documents here (useful for both same sex and other couples are:
1. Wills.
2. Living wills.
3. Durable power of attorney for health care
4. Having your significant other (or a trust) own your life insurance
5. A revocable living trust is useful in holding assets for a “significant other”. Such a trust is also useful if you are man and wife and have children and both parents die, exposing the kids to estate taxes).
The total cost of the above is usually in the 300 to 500 dollar range if done by an attorney, and much of it can be done using standard forms obtained from the internet and having it notarized (though I feel safer using lawyers).
Clueless — thanks for a devastating rejoinder to the “we just need basic legal protection” emoticon assertion.
Business people in close and distant relationships have been mutually providing such basic legal protections now forever . . . it’s a fraudulent red herring emoticon and is only used when people privately recognize that their other arguments have failed.
I look forward to the ranting and wailing that will occur when the will of the people is ultimately enacted in all of this, as I believe that it will be.
Yes, the will of the people will be enacted. Discrimination will not be written into the state constitution.
As for the whole “special rights” canard, Billy, it’s getting very tired. How does asking for the same benefits equal “special” treatment?
Mr. Matz, if you’d actually talk to real gay people, you’d find I’m hardly in a minority on this. Besides, I think your point is fairly irrelevant. I know quite a number of heterosexuals who practice some form of “open sexuality” either openly or discretely (i.e. fooling around on the side), including quite a large number of conservative evangelical pastors (but we won’t get into that). Then there’s the whole bit about more than 50% of opposite-sex marriages ending in divorce, esp. in many of the reddest of red states. If we were using your “logic,” one might conclude that there was something deficient in heterosexual marriage.
Priscilla, there you go again. Does your definition restrict “consummation” to putting, say, Tab P into Slot V (so to speak) in a particular position? Also, what if a heterosexual married couple, for whatever reason, are not able to consummate their marriage sexually? Does that invalidate it?
Basically, what I gather here is that the argument comes down to this: Gays sex, even in the context of a monagamous relationship is wrong because sex is only to be done in a marriage (besides, two people of the same sex showing affection in any way is icky), and they can’t be allowed to marry because gay sex is wrong (and it’s icky too). Wow, you people just don’t get it.
Clueless is anything but in these matters.
And, in reality, most family and estate planners recommend that couples joined together in civil marriage also have prepared and execute these documents.
The truth is that civil marriage–and we should call it this, as opposed to Holy Matrimony–is a contract whose terms and conditions are dictated by the state. Same terms and conditions can be changed by the whim of the state, either by legislative action or by action of the court. Tax accountants and attorneys are especially aware of this basic truth.
I’ve spent a lot of time on this subject, and I’ll just pass along some of the relevant posts:
http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=232
http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=308
http://www.vulcanhammer.org/?p=68
[blockquote]Priscilla, there you go again. Does your definition restrict “consummation†to putting, say, Tab P into Slot V (so to speak) in a particular position? Also, what if a heterosexual married couple, for whatever reason, are not able to consummate their marriage sexually? Does that invalidate it? [/blockquote]
Er, well, yes, ‘positions’, and the willingness of both partners to live without consummation, apart: how can two men consummate sexually, let alone two women?
Perhaps as an emotionally mature wife and mother (I have been ‘deeply’ married for decades) the essentially asexual ‘wrongness’ is plainer to me than it could be to any man: I cannot remember a time in my adult life when I have not known that if there was anything worthwhile for men in homosexual acts, there was certainly nothing for the female of the species, whose sexual maturity and satisfaction depends on a specifically feminine experience unattainable in such acts. (This has been in my thinking and feeling quite independent of any desire for children, which was completely absent from my conscious mind when I was married in 1962.) The male of the species may get up a back-passage, the female gets nowhere fast.
This instinct may go far to account for the fact that there always seem to be an even smaller number of females than males at all interested in lifetime homosexual relations, and that where there are no children lesbian ‘unions’ are even less stable. I still believe, or have come round to believing again, that we have no need of any texts at all to know from observation that homosexual acts are biologically bizarre, and that this is so quite apart from the fact that they cannot lead directly to offspring. I believe, and have gone into scholarly print to this effect, that half of the Pauline argument in Rom. 1 has to do with the ‘biologically bizarre’ aspect of the thing, but that of course Paul sees no conflict between what the late Chief Rabbi of Great Britain called some years ago “the law of God†and that of “nature†in genital relations.
Isn’t it strange how the absurd claim that same-sex physical relations are sexual keeps on coming round? It’s as pathetic, even insane, as if an old woman like me went on hoping to conceive more children in her 70s, i.e. it’s a matter of wanting what is not to be had.
Mr. Montgomery (22) how predictable to demosntrate your own prejudice by assuming without the slightest evidence that straights have no association with “real gays”. Let’s see, one friend with lesbian daughter in relationship, another with gay brother, wife’s friend with whom we vacationed and socialized until her dysfunction and infidelity became an obstacle, gay and lesbian clients. No, I can’t know anything about “real gays” (according to your prejudice) because I am straight. Never mind a lifelong experience with the SF Bay Area, where avoiding the gay lifestyle is unavoidable. your inability to enage with what is well-documented even in gay publications is clear evidence of denial. Rremember, 81% of Roman Catholic abuse was homosexual. And in Holland, perhaps the most gay-friendly country, “committed” partners have an average of eight outside partners per year. So if you are in rare mongamy, congratulations, sincerely. But you are clearly and objectively a tiny minority.
Mr. Matz,
Please save me the “my best friends are gay” bit. Your prejudices seem to be getting in your way; so you still don’t understand.
Priscilla,
Huh? Three times now, and I still have no idea where you’re getting this.
Vulcanhammer – Amen and Amen. Your link in 12 nails it.
Bill Matz – didi’t you know that if you do not agree with a same-sex marriage proponent, you don’t know any “real gays”? Didn’t anyone ever tell you that only if you agree with them do you actually have “gay friends”, since it’s clear that you cannot possibly love someone and disagree with what they do? Tsk, tsk, man. /sarcasm
I notice Mr. Montgomery does not have an answer for clueless and is incapable of following Dr. Turner. Interesting.
Kevin Montgomery; #22 & #26
You stated:
“What is it going to take to get that through to you people?!”
“Wow, you people just don’t get it.”
Perhaps, not. But perhaps you don’t get it either. When you commented that Mr. Matz didn’t know any ‘real gay people’, he addressed your comment with his experience of gay people; you dismissed it with the ‘spare me, my best friends are gay’ canard.
Please tell us what you consider to be a ‘legitimate’ experience of ‘real gay people.’ If it consists only of those homosexual men and women who agree with you, then I would suggest that you are the one dehumanizing gays and lesbians.
And, Kevin #22, if we were using your “logic,” we’d conclude there’s nothing wrong with heterosexuals who practice some form of “open sexuality†either openly or discretely (i.e. fooling around on the side); and nothing wrong with consensual incest; and nothing wrong with polyamory; and nothing wrong with statutory rape; etc.