Posted on 11/05/2008 4:33:47 PM PST by SmithL
LOS ANGELES -- In a heartbreaking defeat for the gay-rights movement, California voters put a stop to gay marriage, creating uncertainty about the legal status of 18,000 same-sex couples who tied the knot during a four-month window of opportunity opened by the state's highest court.
Passage of a constitutional amendment against gay marriage in a state so often at the forefront of liberal social change elated religious conservatives who had little else to cheer about in Tuesday's elections. Gay activists were disappointed and began looking for battlegrounds elsewhere in the back-and-forth fight to allow gays to wed.
"There's something deeply wrong with putting the rights of a minority up to a majority vote," said Evan Wolfson, a gay-rights lawyer who heads a group called Freedom to Marry. "If this were being done to almost any other minority, people would see how un-American this is."
Legal skirmishing began immediately, with gay-rights groups challenging the newly passed ban in court Wednesday and vowing to resist any effort to invalidate the same-sex marriages that took place following the state Supreme Court decision in May.
The amendment, which passed with 52 percent of the vote, overrides that court ruling by defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Thirty states now have adopted such measures, but the California vote marks the first time a state took away gay marriage after it had been legalized.
Gay-marriage bans also passed on Tuesday in Arizona and Florida, with 57 percent and 62 percent support, respectively, while Arkansas voters approved a measure aimed at gays that bars unmarried couples from serving as adoptive or foster parents.
Massachusetts and Connecticut are now the only states to allow same-sex marriage.
Even as the last votes were being counted in California, the American Civil Liberties Union...
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Amazing, considering the majority just voted to give themselves more benefits - at the expense of the minority.
Shall we have a discussion about who produces and pays the taxes in this country.
Newsflash: Production doesn't just mean turning a screw. Production is the end result of a creative mind. Take away the creative mind and what will the "workers" of this country have to produce.
I'm gonna step out on a limb, but I'm guessing the thinkers - the real producers of this country are a miniority.
'Heartbreaking,' eh? No bias there, no siree. /s
Here’s the map of how the vote in Calinfornia broke down.
http://vote.sos.ca.gov/Returns/props/map190000000008.htm
What’s surprising is that Los Angeles County voted in favor of Proposition 8.
Jarred. But they swear they slipped and fell on it in the shower.
“Whats surprising is that Los Angeles County voted in favor of Proposition 8?”
Not really when you take into consideration that 54% Hispanics, 49% Asians & 70% Blacks voted for Prop 8.
Of course, some lawyers in black robes may very well reverse the vote of the people yet again...
The monogamous marriage is a religious rite and it comes directly from religion.
Since when should the religious standard of monogamous marriage be applied to secular law???
Why not polygyny or polyandry???
ANSWER: Religious faggots cannot admit there is an axiomatic state of reproductive mammalian biology scientifically consistent with evolutionary theory.
It's not all that surprising. Blacks and Latinos voted for Prop 8, enthusiastically. A couple of my black (somewhat liberal) friends are livid that the SF whackos are trying to frame this as a civil rights issue and comparing it to discrimination against blacks. I hope the pro-gay-marriage folks keep up that line of propaganda--it's a sure loser!
You’re slipping a bit into their playing field when you say “same definition” that has “existed for millenia”.
It is THE only definition, defined by God, not on a whim by societies, no matter how old.
All they’re trying to do is UNdefine it.
I have a question about the assertion as to the racial, or ethnic identy of voters... How can anyone tell how blacks or hispanics voted? There is no place to designate such a thing on ballots. Only on regristration forms where I write in "human" when it asks my race!!!
I don't doubt these percentages, I just can't figure out where and how this info is recorded from our "secret ballots."
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