Judge Strikes Down Prop. 8 / and I address some hate.

via The LA Times:

A federal judge in San Francisco decided today that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry, striking down Proposition 8, the voter approved ballot measure that banned same-sex unions.

U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker said Proposition 8, passed by voters in November 2008, violated the federal constitutional rights of gays and lesbians to marry the partners of their choice. His ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and then up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

.....

Backers of Proposition 8 contended that the legal burden was on the challengers to prove there was no rational justification for voting for the measure. They cited as rational a view that children fare best with both a father and a mother.

But defense witnesses conceded in cross-examination that studies show children reared from birth by same-sex couples fared as well as those born to opposite-sex parents and that marriage would benefit the families of gays and lesbians.

I so wish this would be the end of it, but of course NOM and the usual suspects are already planning their appeal. I'll just let some of the choicer bits of stupid grace my blog for a bit so I can hold them up for what they are:

First up, Maggie Gallagher--

Judge Walker's view is truly a radical rejection of Americans' rights, our history and our institutions that will only fuel a popular rebellion now taking place against elites who are more interested in remaking American institutions than respecting them.

If this ruling is upheld, millions of Americans will face for the first time a legal system that is committed to the view that our deeply held moral views on sex and marriage are unacceptable in the public square, the fruit of bigotry that should be discredited, stigmatized and repressed. Parents will find that, almost Soviet-style, their own children will be re-educated using their own tax dollars to disrespect their parents' views and values.

Regarding the highlighted part--FUCK YEAH! Ms. Gallagher, your deeply held moral views on sex and marriage are not acceptable because you are baselessly passing judgement upon your fellow human beings and telling them how to live. No one died and left you "Bedroom Boss"! Your point of view is bigoted and should be discredited because it is simply not right, and regardless of the opinion of people who voted for this marriage ban for one specific class of consenting adults, the essential right to be treated equally trumps your right to dictate to them. You still have a right to your opinion. But you would be surprised to the extent that this so-called "re-education" is anything but. It's merely an education: that different people may want different things, and can live their own lives in way that, ahem, aren't even your business.

(I do not understand why this woman is making other people's business her crusade. There are so many more productive and healthy things she could be doing with her time. I worry about her lifestyle. If a small child asked me why she was concerned about other people's marriages, I don't even know what I'd tell them. Hmph.)

And from Bishop Harry Jackson, a splendid example of "not getting it"--

Prop 8 Decision Threatens Core Civil Right to Vote for Marriage -This is a travesty of justice. The majority of Californians - and two-thirds of black voters in California - have just had their core civil right to vote for marriage stripped from them by an openly gay federal judge who has misread history and the Constitution to impose his San Francisco views on the American people.

The implicit comparison Judge Walker made between racism and marriage is particularly offensive to me and to all of us who remember the reality of Jim Crow.

It is not bigotry it is biology that discriminates between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples. To make a marriage requires a husband and a wife because these unions are necessary to make new life and connect children to their mother and father.

Judge Walker’s slur will not stand the test of time and history. We demand that Congress and the Supreme Court act to protect all Americans’ right to vote for marriage.

Yes, Bishop Jackson, there is nothing like letting the voice of the majority decide who is and is not supposed to be treated as equal. I am sure that if the people voted on the ability of inter-racial couples to marry, they would have, in those days, been just as right as the Loving decision was. Just the same as the people all on their own would have recognized the inequality implicit in segregation, and rid themselves of it at the ballot box without the Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education decision.

And then we woke up.

Bishop--this decision isn't even about you! It's about gay people! They are people! And they happen to be gay. Somehow, they have worked out the biology issue--which accounts for only a tiny portion of anyone's life. The rest is about love, companionship, supporting one another, nurturing one another, wanting to live together, and wanting to even love that person unto death--that isn't a damn thing about biology. Fuck you, pardon my language, for reducing my heterosexual marriage to a question of biology, for the kids we aren't going to have, for the fact that only a little sliver of my own marriage even has to do with sex--you, sir, cheapen marriage when you put it that way! You don't have any especial right to vote for or against another person's happiness, and you are ridiculously wrong in your understanding of family and marriage.

"Connect children to their mother and father"? So much for adoptive parents, foster parents, step-parents! The sexual ability to reproduce isn't what makes good parents and there are many, many people with crappy biological parents who will tell you that the biological act of making them did not actually imbue those parents with any wonderful parenting magic. The thing that makes that parenting connection, that children since the beginning of humanity need to become self-actualized, happy adults, is love. And gay people have it, because sometimes that is all that keeps a community together when there are so many people who would make second-class citizens out of a minority group and even congratulate themselves for the privilege.

I'm sure more people will have more foolishness to say about this issue, but those were some really sad examples.