The wonderful Emma Ruby Sachs has an awesome article up on HuffPo summarizing how the trial will proceed on Thursday. The convoluted California constitutional law at work in this case is fascinating. Definitely check it out!
You can watch the proceedings at http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/highprofile/prop8viewing.htm this Thursday! History in the making folks!
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Yes, the upcoming supreme court will be exciting and scary with the potential huge positive or negative outcomes.
The recent (winter 09) Northern California ACLU news had a couple of great articles re prop 8 and the supreme court case. One article titled Beond Prop 8: The Writing on the Wall by Matt Coles (Director of ACLU LGBT and Aids project and author of "Try This At Home! a practical guide to passing nondiscrimination and domestic partnership laws") provided the following background and insights:
"Intimacy for same sex couples was a crime in California until 1974. There wasn't a single law recognizing LGBT relationships anywhere in the U.S. until the Berkeley Unified School District passed one in 1984. ...
If you run up an unbroken string of victories in any battle for civil rights, that simply means you waited too long to get to work. ...
We didn't lose (Prop 8) by much. Eight years ago, on virtually the same issue, we could only get 39 percent. On Election day we got over 48. We've come a long way in what is, in cultural history, a short time. ...
And as long as we keep the pressure on -and we will- we'll win this thing. In a few years Proposition 8 will be but a dim memory"
In the other article ("The Case Against Prop 8") it states:
"Immediately after the November election, The ACLU-NC, Lambda Legal, and the National Center for Lesbian RIghts filed a writ petition in the California Supreme Court urging the court to invalidate Proposition 8. ...
Forty-three "friend of the court" briefs were filed affirming our position as of Jan 21, ...
A brief authored by Professor Karl Manheim, one of the foremost authorities on California's initiative process, stated 'Proposition 8 ... improperly attempts to revise the Constitution by taking the unprecedented step of singling out a suspect class and depriving that class-and only that class-of a fundamental right' "
A sidebar to this article states:
"The ACLU is helping to spearhead a campaign to prompt LGBT people and their supporters to have three conversations with friends and family to help build support for LGBT equality, particularly marriage equality."
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