Welcome to your Tuesday open thread. What’s on your mind?
Yesterday the Prop 8 appeal began. It wasn’t a great day for the pro-Prop 8 (anti- marriage equality) side.
Judge Smith focused a couple times on whether the State of California was in a worse position for having passed Prop 8 because it has given all of the same rights and privileges under the auspices of the domestic partnership statute. In other words, if we are only fighting over a word, and no substantive differences at the state level, aren’t we essentially creating a subclass? And roughly transcribed, here’s what Cooper said:
Cooper: The word is the institution. If you redefine the word, you change the institution.
I actually think this was a big moment of the oral argument. It said that yes, the anti-equality forces were there only to “put down” gays and lesbians, or as San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart said (again, this is my rough notes here):
If the word is the institution, then the argument is just that gays and lesbians would “stain” the institution. The fact that Prop 8 is symbolic, it makes the insult obvious. This is classification for its own sake, and it violates the equal protection clause. Taking these components together, it infers animus.
If we only passed Prop 8 to show that same-sex couples aren’t as good, or as worthy as other couples, then isn’t the equal protection argument plain to see? It reveals the naked schoolyard taunting aspect of Prop 8. Nah-nanny-boo boo, you aren’t as good as me. And frankly, nanny-boo-boo isn’t a valid use of state authority.
Hopefully the court will dismiss the stay and same-sex marriages can resume. I think most legal experts believe that this will make it all the way to the Supreme Court, where who knows what those judicial activists will do.
LOL, I wonder what her first clue was?
UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE DAY…. Everyone makes mistakes.
The wife of Justice Clarence Thomas says her phone call to Anita Hill was “probably a mistake on my part.”
In an interview with the Daily Caller, Virginia Thomas said her call to Hill was not the reason she resigned as leader of the conservative “citizen activists” group Liberty Central.
“Probably a mistake” seems like an accurate assessment. In case you need a refresher, Ginni Thomas, an odd right-wing activist, left a creepy, accusatory voice-mail message for Brandeis University professor Anita Hill in October, calling early on a Saturday morning.
I’m thankful that Ginni Thomas’s classless phone call brought Clarence Thomas’s bad behavior and lying back into the public eye. It was so disgusting that one of Thomas’s exes came forward to corroborate Anita Hill.