Gay Marriage Ban Overturned in California

In November of 2006, Carolyn Marshall of the New York Times reported that San Francisco's same-sex marriage ban was to be appealed with the San Francisco Supreme Court. Previously a court agreed that failure to offer gay marriage was unconstitutional and a state law requiring marriage to be entered into only by a male and female needed to be overturned.

Justice is a labor of love and it works oh so slowly but Thursday, May 15, 2008 was to be the watershed for California and true to form, the state known for being the liberal entertainment capital of the world has not disappointed. A much anticipated ruling finally clearly spelling out whether or not same-sex couples will be permitted to wed just like their opposite-sex counterparts has been made!

According to the ruling made by the California Supreme Court, same-sex marriage is now legal! This makes California the second state, after Massachusetts, where gay and lesbian couples may now wed.

Vindicating the marriages of what 365Gay estimates to be about 8,000 couples sanctioned-then illegally-by San Francisco's mayor Gavin Newsom, the Gay Pride Parades planned for this weekend in Long Beach and other areas are sure to be highly celebratory!

While Lambda Legal, the ACLU, and also the National Center for Lesbian Rights are breaking out the champagne, not everyone is ready to toast this ruling. On the losing end of the argument are the voters who in the 2000 election voted in a ban on gay marriage known as Proposition 22.

California's governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who previously was vociferously against legalizing gay marriage, made a startling 180 degree turn in his opinion when he announced to the Log Cabin Republicans that he would now oppose a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman. Tony Grew of the UK's Pink News made the startling revelation that instead, the governor was favoring a change of the Constitution to permit those who are naturalized citizens to run for President--a somewhat (perhaps) self-serving statement.

As Justice Corrigan stated in his concurring and dissenting summary of the decision, new ideas are not popular at the onset, but over time they are incorporated into the social fabric and before long it is hard to imagine life before they came into effect. Justice Kennard concurred that the definition of marriage is a decision that can only be rendered by the courts and not by voters at the ballot box.

Yet is this truly the end of the debate in California?

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/
http://www.365gay.com
http://www.pinknews.co.uk