Second guessing the reason for the outcome on PROP 8 after-the-fact is easy.

Where was your support before/during this fiasco?

Get your facts straight (no pun intended) before you start pointing fingers. Remember, when you point ONE finger at someone else you still have FOUR pointing back at yourself.

Sorry you turned out to be a bigot as well as a mediocre reporter.

The passage of same-sex marriage is virtually inevitable. There was/is always going to be resistance to change.
Blacks
Women
Interracial marriage
Catholics
Jews
etc ., etc., etc.,

If laws weren’t enacted, then enforced, none of the civil/human rights advances would have happened. Same-sex is no different, regardless of your (opponents) particular spin on the issue.

Can’t use religion as a reason to oppress, so what does that leave? Education. Can’t use that, because I don’t even remember marriage being taught, let alone ‘gay’ marriage. So, what we’re left with is this: it’s gross……Well, so is obesity. Are we going to legislate obesity? Farting in public is gross. Are we going to legislate that? How ’bout high-water pants?

Wake up people. Get out of other people’s business. Funny, but conservatives want government to leave them alone, but want government to get in the middle of other people’s business……..

At the end of the day, it’s the voters who passed the proposition. No matter how people ran the campaigns, it still up to the people in the voter booth to make the decision. If they are that easily swayed by nonsubstantial political ads, then they shouldn’t have been voting on it in the first place.

The whole gay marriage issue is a no-brainer. It only affects people who are gay. If they want it, there is no reason why there should be a law against it. Of course, like most no-brainer issues in America, it is still a hot button issue.

I live in California, and donated to the ACLU campaign. And frankly, I was disappointed in the ads my money was used to run. No bang for the buck.

This issue was largely decided by television ads in the last month, and the television ads against prop 8 were lousy and uninspired. They where the sort of calm, reasonable, emotion free ads that appealed only to the already converted.

We should have been running ads showing married couples talking about the specific rights marriage, and how that impacted their lives on issues like hospital visitation, death, birth, and health care. We should have been running ads about what can happen when you invalidate someones marriage.

Instead, we ran ads from teachers saying “we won’t teach gay marriage in schools.” Seriously, WTF?

I am so glad that the Democratic party is so inclusive.

Don’t support Obama – You are a racist
Don’t support gay marriage – You are homophobic
Don’t support illegal immigration – You are xenophobic (and racist too)

I find it curious that the party of the KKK (think Robert Byrd) is so judgmental of those not supporting their position!

So, what’s the shelf life of gasoline? It’s down to $1.54 hereabouts and I can’t remember it being that low. Time to fill up all those old coffee containers.

This whole thing makes me vewy, vewy nervous. The oil companies must be losing their ass. I expect them to appeal to Congress for bail-out soon.

Who will be the next to seek ‘assistance?’ Intel? MS?

Jed Clampett

Oil companies loosing money? you must be jesting. And if you truly search your memory banks, you can find it was even lower than this and the oil companies were still making mad profits. Today’s extraction and refining process is much more efficient and cheaper than when gasoline was 20 cents a gallon.

JP, are you making the case for denying the vote to the ignorant and easily misled? Seems that if your logic prevails very few people would actually be voting and even fewer making decisions on our behalf. Not to mention you would have to change Fox news into a REAL news organization.

Peace

Don’t u worry all you religous nuts, we fruits and nuts in CA will win next time. it is just going to take a little longer than we thought. Anyway, why do religous people care so much about hate. i just do not get it.

I agree that the blame for this stupid amendment is not the fault of the African-American community. The Mormons probably have more to do with it.

That said, it’s a sad day for democracy when a deceptive marketing campaign can swing a vote to alter the constitution of a liberal state to facilitate the denial of rights for a segment of the population. When did we become so stupid? What am I saying? I guess we’ve always been this stupid! Shame on you California voters! You have been thoroughly propagandized.

Holy Crap, people….If we legalize same-sex marriage what’s next? Interracial marriage? Women’s rights? Don’t, for one minute, tell me that slavery will end…..

Tony. The reason that religion is filled with so much hate is because they’re protecting myth.

This is kind of ridiculous. It was the voters (and rightly so) who made the decision to approve Prop. 8, not the respective campaigns. Whether you agree with the proposition or not, the vote reflected the views of the people of California, which is what matters, not the courts. It’s not an issue of ignorance but of beliefs, like abortion. In a few years, the people may become a little more progressive and feel it necessary to approve gay marriage, but currently, their ideology doesn’t reflect that of this blog. Take it as a lesson guys. By the way, ignorance works equally on the right as it does on the left and to say otherwise is to be in a state of denial (or even ignorance) yourself.

P.S. Jed is right about the oil companies. The price of the barrel of oil (speaking in percentages) has dropped more than the price at the pump. The oil companies are still making huge profits.

Melt: What’s next? Polygamy, no legal way to say three people can’t be married when you have already significantly changed the definition.

Tin: I agree the ignorant voters of California fell for the myth of Obama and “Change” (how many ex-Clinton staff have been named already?)

Nice try D&C. Funny, but that’s the standard reply: “What’s next, Polygamy? Man marrying animal? Man marrying man AND woman?

If it doesn’t affect you, and doesn’t harm anybody, why is it any of your business? Why would/do people care so much? What are they afraid of?

Here we see a conservative that wants government to, generally, stay out of his business, but is fully ready to intervene in other people’s business……

Meltdown

To play devil’s advocate, what of the man wants to marry 2 or 3 women or his dog? Isn’t the government impeding in his personal business in the same way it has for man wanting to marry another man? I think D&C’s point is that when you change the definition of marriage, at what point do you redraw the line in the sand? If the issue is really about the civil rights of a minority faction, how can deny other factions who want to be married in alternative ways? This whole issue is a little more complex when you remove the emotion (left and right) and think about the issue logically and from the perspective of the law.

Jesus H Christ CCo and D&C. It’s easy. You draw the marriage line at TWO HUMAN BEINGS NOT OF THE SAME BLOODLINE. Simple. Easy. Comprehensive. Done.

But, as we see, nobody is answering why they care who or what somebody else wants to marry. You don’t care what they wear, where they live, what they eat, what they watch, listen to, or read. But, you care who they marry? WHY????

You know what? I’m for polygamy. The only stipulations are: all parties involved are aware of the other partners in the marriage and they are all consensual adults. I see no reason why there should be a law against it.

As for the silly argument of gay marriage leading to marrying animals, it’s a non-starter. Animals can’t give their consent to marry.

What gay marriage is about is allowing consensual adults enjoying the same rights as other consensual adults. It’s that simple.

If you wonder why social change like segregation and abortion have to be settle in the courts instead of voting for it. This issue provides a good historical reminder.

CCo,
If all social change depended on a popular vote we would still have Jim Crowe, and inter-racial marriage would be illegal. It IS the roll of the court to determine constitutionality like it or not. California’s new amendment effectively makes the state constitution pathological (it now contradicts itself). Certainly even a tool such as yourself can see how this is a BAD thing.

Here’s a suggestion: Make the term “Marriage” the domain of the church. Eliminate any legal definition. Therefore, marriages of all types could be referred to by the law as “legal unions”. Then maybe people wouldn’t get so hung up on a word? Of course this would free up the term for all to use (as it should be).

TFH

Public pressure dictates social rulings in the courts and legislature. The Jim Crowe laws were eradicated because of a populace no longer willing to stand by for racial injustice. However, I think it’s offensive (and so did the blacks who overwhelmingly supported Prop to put this issue on the same plane of injustice as segregation. The issue is over marriage and how to define it. While I of course agree that a gay couple should have the same opportunity at happiness as a straight couple, the solution has to be worked out legally and in the will of majority of the people.

Not sure why that’s a smiley face… I meant “eight”.

CCo,

On May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment. This decision is widely held to be the most importaint single event leading to the complete demise of Jim Crowe. The point is that the court does have a role above and beyond public opinion, which most certainly would not have come to the same decision.

The issue is NOT how to define marriage. The issue is according the same civil rights to gay couples that are presently accorded to straight couples.

All other arguments are red herrings to obscure the main point.

Ah, but the word is important. No other word has such international cache. You may think that creating some second category of “civil union” is equal. But such a category can never carry with it all the same access and implications represented by the legacy of the word itself. This is why I advocate that either the legal definition should be expanded to include all couples, or the word should be abolished from legal language. No other solution can be truely equal.

TFH
I think you have an interesting point in legally abolishing the word “marriage”. A “union” of some kind should absolutely be made available to gay couples, and, by not using the word “marriage” in a legal sense, you effectively draw the line between hetro relationships and gay relationships with a pencil instead of a marker (if you get at what I’m saying). So I’m going to call your thought interesting. Practical? Maybe not, but I’m not against your proposition in theory.

Also, I wasn’t saying that the courts do not play a role, especially when it is clear that the constitution is being violated. I was trying to say that will (or the good) of the people should be represented through legislative and judicial decisions. Again, this issue just isn’t on the same plane of injustice as racial segregation, where they’re was a clear violation of the constitution. Also, when you don’t wrap the issue in emotion (Dirty Dennis) from the left or right, the issue really is how to define marriage. No reasonable person is looking to oppress the rights of gay people, but there needs to be a proper precedent set in defining marriage due to it’s legal ramifications.

Kid,

Although you mean it as a dig, I take it as a compliment. Of course, there are scores of DirtyDennis Friends (Okay, maybe not scores) who would find your assessment of me as emotional to be great fun indeed. DirtyDennis? Emotional?

In point of fact, I care. I care about injustice, greed and elitism. I believe that the principles upon which this country was founded and MANY have died to sustain are principles we SHOULD care about. Sadly, I fear I am in the minority.

You can call me emotional all you want and I shall bask in your praise. I may, even, find a moment to be TRULY emotional about some subject that passes through these portals.

But do NOT call me selfish, greedy or insensitive to the needs of others. (Not that I could do much about it except pose VIGOROUS objections.)

PS Good to see you BurnDaddy. Don’t be a stranger.

Jed Clampett

Do you remember how much the people of color had to struggle to get those inalienable rights afforded to all people, regardless of creed or nationality, actually implemented in policy? It took a leader that was willing to risk his life and that of his people to carry out a non violent struggle to force the legislative body to LISTEN to the WILL OF THE PEOPLE. They have to be FORCED to listen by protests and demonstrations because that is the currency of the public as opposed to the currency of the lobbyists, which seems to get a greater audience in congress.

If you think the struggle will be less difficult to get our government back from corporate interests then you don’t understand human nature… particularly the nature of those who have monopolized power.

Peace

Dennis, there is nothing noble in being emotional without being logical. Your emotion is what prevents your from seeing this as a legal issue about the definition of marriage. That is a problem. Similarly, emotion in the form of these violent gay protests outside of (mostly Mormon) churches is hurting their cause. You think I don’t care? Get over yourself. Caring is no excuse to be narrow-minded and illogical. That’s a lesson that for everyone on the fringes of our political spectrum (for instance, the people on this site) need to learn. Do you know why Barack Obama is becoming more of a Centrist over the past year? Because that’s what it takes to be a reasoned, effective decision maker. You do not care more than me Dennis, you just aren’t as level-headed.

Kid,

I take no pride in ‘caring’ more than thee for the only thing you seem to care about is your intellectual one-upmanship.

Level-headed. You brandish that as some all powerful weapon that scythes through opposing perspectives.

It’s been my experience that level-headed is really a euphemism for such things as bigotry, greed and selfishness.

The German people were being ‘level-headed’ when they allowed Hitler to get away with his madness. Things were getting better. People were working and eating.

Slave owners were ‘level-headed’ when they said they couldn’t produce the crops without slave labor. It was slavery or perish.

Spare me level-headed, I’ve read about it too much in history books and seen it too much in my own lifetime. Show me some emotion. Care about something other than yourself. You’ll like yourself more. I promise.

What you just said is not an argument. Hitler was emotional. The people who voted him into power did so on emotion (anger at the country’s economic free-fall following WWI). Hitler probably also liked pie like me. Your point? Hitler, slave owners, ect. were not open to different social or political perspectives. Call it being reasoned, logical, level-headed, whatever, but the reason we cannot have an intellectual debate is because your emotion (or as the Federalists would say, “passion”) trumps your ability to reason. That is all, sir.

Interesting little battle about the ‘definition of marriage’ being the sticking point here huh? Methinks you had no problem with ‘redefining’ torture though, right?

Don’t hide behind semantics. You know, I know, Everybody knows that this is all about oppressing a segment of society that’s ‘different’. It’s just another sorry era of American history. It’s been done to Indians, Mexicans, Women, Blacks, People who drank alcohol, smoked weed, interracial relationships, Japanese Americans, etc,, etc,, etc,,

Revisionist history, Kid, you need to take a refresher course. And this is NOT about Hitler, per se, but about the German people, so don’t color the discussion with cute homilies about him. Sure, the German people were angry in the 1930s, rightly so, but Hitler was in office ELEVEN years. After he rebuilt the economy on a war footing, the German people were fat and sassy, and level-headed, even when he began rounding up the Jews. Decent people didn’t much like it, but they were eating and they remembered what it was like to be hungry. They REASONED their morally bereft rationale, just as many in this country ‘reason’ that it’s better to fight terrorists ‘over there’ than ‘over here,’ morally ignoring the humiliating and degrading behavior of our government on peoples of different cultures than our own.

‘Clear heads’ ‘reasoned’ that it was ‘necessary’ to destroy the Amerindian culture to make way for a European one, ‘clear heads’ ‘reasoned’ that is was ‘okay’ to subject other cultures to fire bombing and nuclear holocaust in a misguided effort to ’save lives,’ just like ‘clear heads’ ‘reason’ that it is better to save corrupt, moribund institutions than to cleanse the moral soul of this country.

You’re absolutely right, Kid, we can NOT have an ‘intellectual’ debate but for the wrong reasons. You reduce the world, through a convoluted prism of your own making, into a simple formula predicated on YOUR value system. A value system that apparently disregards humanism, compassion and kindness.

I am proud of my ‘passion.’ John Adams had it and made mistakes because of it, but he always took the high road in regards to his fellow man. Thomas Jefferson did NOT have passion and took the low road in regards to his fellow man.

And I’m in good company, your opinion notwithstanding. George Bush, no passion; Barack Obama, passion. Dick Cheney, no passion; Hillary Clinton, passion. Abe Lincoln, passion; JFK, passion; Martin Luther King, passion; Bobby Kennedy, passion. Thanks Kid, you put me into some fine company. And do you want to know what each of these also had: COMpassion. And you can’t have compassion without first having passion.

An intellectual debate without passion is like an artichoke without mayonnaise.

Jed Clampett

Bravo!!

Dennis, you have it absolutely right.

Peace to all, always.

All opposition to gay marriage is based on hatred of gays. Anyone who says they don’t is lying. That having been said, the segregation analogy is apt. here. What if a state decided to allowing the killing of gays? Don’t think it could happen? Try reading some of the responses from the right to “Lawrence v. Texas”. You want to talk about making purely emotional arguments to justify a law, that’s the place to start. If the majority decided they wanted to kill off all gays (which I beleive is where the groups that are pushing to ban gay marriage are really headed) following the logic of majority rule, that would be permitted. The courts exist for a reason, to make sure that the minority are protected from possibly life threatening laws. Or perhaps we want some chemical company to be able to pay off the politicians and get away with poisining our water supply. If it’s the law, then it’s the law after all.

CCo,

You said:
“you effectively draw the line between hetro [sic.] relationships and gay relationships with a pencil instead of a marker (if you get at what I’m saying).”

No! I’m saying there are two possible solutions which remain constituional.

Scenario 1: Recognize the word as legal for all couples (as many state courts have ruled).

Scenario 2: Eliminate the word “marriage” from the legal language. Think about it. If the word is eliminated from the language of the state for ANY couple, then it becomes the domain of the church / culture. Any gay couple could then go to the UCC and get married, because the UCC would be willing to certify their “legal union” as a lawful “marriage” according to UCC doctrine.

BTW, It is ridiculous to alter a functional state constitution with pathological language.

DD
Reason and passion are not independent, however your passion is making you illogical because you refuse to see the other side of the issue. Please, spin everything I say some more, but it’s not my argument that passion is dangerous and can lead ignorance, its the founders of our country. Go read the Federalist Papers and stop talking to me.

TFH
I think you misinterpreted how I meant that (I wasn’t very clear), but I think you bring up a good point and applaud you for actually thinking (cough) about this issue from a legal perspective.

Kid,

I said, “The issue is NOT how to define marriage. The issue is according the same civil rights to gay couples that are presently accorded to straight couples.”

To which you responded, “Also, when you don’t wrap the issue in emotion (Dirty Dennis) from the left or right, the issue really is how to define marriage.”

Inasmuch as my comments reflected nada emotion, rather a reasoned position, and your comments were inflamatory and baseless, as per usual (you try SO hard to be ‘intellectual’ that you miss it by miles), I find it difficult to take any claims you might make relative to my composure.

You just ain’t got what it takes to make that call, Kid. Maybe in a dozen years or so, but not at the rate you’re ‘progressing.’

Federalist Papers. That’s too funny. As if Hamilton and Madison are the sum and substance of the Constitutional thinking. They’re but two and are only ‘remembered’ because of their towering ego which led them to write so copiously.

None of the same-sex opponents are communicating the reasons behind their deep desire to withold rights from same-sexes. DiC? CCo? Why do you guys care so much about who other people want to marry? It’s almost as if you think it will impact who your children decide to marry. If that’s the case, let me remind you how impossible it is to fake attraction. It doesn’t last. Meaning, even if your kid thought it might be ‘cool’ to marry someone of the same sex, do you really think it’s going to last?

I guess this lies in that false premise that people ‘choose’ to be gay……..

Jed Clampett

They have, they just haven’t been overt about it. Like Jon exposed against the Huckster the other night, they think being gay is a choice. Like they choose to be simpleminded.

It’s obvious they HATE gays, like they HATE immigrants, and they HATE ‘terrorists’, and they HATE communists and HATE nature. It’s just the symptom expressed when a soul is engaged in self loathing; when they are not hating others, or criticizing others or ridiculing others for not having the same view of the world, then the internal voice starts criticizing the self, so much that it is uncontrollable. It tells them what screwed up creatures theyh are, so rather than listen to the internal voice and start working to improve the self, they devolve into criticizing others, typically over issues they themselves exhibit, because it is much easier than improving the self. Dishonest selfishness.

Peace

Bigotry and ignorance are ‘choices.’ Sexual predilection is not.