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You knew I couldn't let this one sit
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kproche started it, and it has been picked up by most of my FL:A "No" vote on Proposition 8 will annul no marriages.
A "Yes" vote on Proposition 8 will annul over 10,000 marriages.
Which vote is really protecting marriage?
Truth is, Prop 8 probably won't annul any marriages. Atty. Gen. Brown has said as much. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/04/BA8P1250FN.DTL&tsp=1
It's rare for a right to be taken away retroactively, and the language of the amendment does not say anything about reaching back into the past. Think about it - we have very strict drunk driving laws, but nobody is being thrown in jail who was arrested for DUI prior to those laws. People who smoked indoors prior to the anti-smoking ordinances got away with it and are Scott-free. My favorite two strip joints are still in operation because the courts ruled it illegal to close them down when the zoning laws were changed in an attempt to boot them out.
I'm still voting against Prop 8, but I wish my side would stick to the facts.
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Brown is offering a legal opinion. Nothing more, nothing less.
The proponents of Prop 8 believe and have in their ballot arguments the claim that the initiative will invalidate all same-sex marriages regardless of when and where they were performed. In the case of passage, they will sue to see that implementation follows their interpretation.
Your smoking analogy doesn't fly. People who smoked indoors prior to the anti-smoking ordinances weren't grandfathered in and allowed to continue smoking in bars.
The zoning laws example is better, and court cases may play out that way. However, the article you quote points out that ballot arguments have been used by courts to figure out "the will of the people" when interpreting an initiative statute.
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"Domestic partners do not have, as far as I know:
* Privileged communication
* Conjugal visits in prison
* Automatic inheritance without a will
* Automatic inclusion on each others' health insurance
* Legal parenthood of a child born to the other partner (in CA, if a married woman has a baby, the husband is legally the father, regardless of biology--he cannot claim "that's not my child" & refuse to pay for its upbringing. No idea how this ties to f-f marriages; I don't think it's come up yet.)
And, of course, all the social issues tied to the word "marriage"... if they're "just the same," why doesn't anyone get divorced in order to get a domestic partnership? You'd think that, comparing the various federal benefits of one or the other (income tax is the big one that comes to mind), it'd sometimes be advantageous to have a DP rather than a marriage."
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http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=fam&group=00001-01000&file=297-297.5
See the second paragraph.
Male/female couples are not allowed to become domestic partners under California law unless one of them is over 62 years old. There are some small exceptions to that rule, but in general DP is not available to mixed sex couples for the very reasons you mention.
It is a purely emotional issue. Being married by the government gives warm fuzzies to people who have been denied that opportunity. I understand that feeling of being granted a long-denied opportunity and then having it snatched away on a whim.
Let me tell you an ironic story. My cousin Shana and her guy Spike were married in city hall in Brighton, just as the 2006 Pride Parade was passing by. I took this picture:
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But even if it is purely an emotional issue, I agree with you that that doesn't make it any less important. Emotions, as I've said, drive us; if they're out of whack, everything we do suffers. Applying the courage/serenity/wisdom formula shows that this is something that need not be accepted and can be changed (or rather, for the moment, prevented from changing for the worse).
And yes, my country is retropic and hamstrung by outmoded ideas too. That's part of our charm. We're supposed to be the counterweight to California (smaller land area, so longer arm).
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Sorry, I had not meant for you to do so, I was just following the age-old formula of citing the source.
part of our charm
Another part is being able to have a huge Pride Parade half a block away from that sign. We were whisked off to the reception in a double-decker bus, so I didn't have a chance to take many parade pix, but here's my favorite:
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