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California's Prop 8 (gay marriage ban) ruled unconstitutional
- fuzz579 16y agoHow long 'til it gets to the supreme court?
- Marticus 16y agoProbably soon, but still a step in the right direction.
- mattlanger 16y agoHeads next to the Ninth Circuit, which will doubtlessly uphold the ruling. Then it'll be on to the SCOTUS, which is a very different court from the '03 bench that ruled on Lawrence v. Texas.
- Locke1689 16y agoNot necessarily. SCOTUS is very particular about the cases it submits cert for. The 9th cir. may stand, although it's liberal reputation won't help when it comes to the modern conservative court.
- erikpukinskis 16y agoWhy would the SCOTUS want to get involved? Are they in the business of deciding whether state supreme courts are correctly interpreting their state constitutions?
- Locke1689 16y agoActually, had you actually read the ruling, you would have noticed that the primary foundation for the ruling was not the California state constitution, but the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses [US Constitution, Amendment XIV § 1].
- caryme 16y agoProposition 8 "fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples..."
- chc 16y agoAlthough I don't disagree with that statement, I don't see how it advances a legal basis for reversing the amendment.
- anonymouslambda 16y agoThis is the legal basis for the decision: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_basis_review
- chc 16y agoBut this isn't reviewing a government action; it's reviewing a citizen initiative. It seems like the "community standards" argument must surely hold here if it does anywhere, even if the community is being irrational.
- anonymouslambda 16y agoYes, it's an citizen initiative, but once passed it is a law that is enforced by the government. When a gay couple goes to get a marriage license, it's the government that is denying them one.
- jwhitlark 16y agoWe have a constitution to protect our basic rights from the tyranny of the majority. This is an example of the most important function of our courts.
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- gigafemtonano 16y agoI don't get scribd. Why wouldn't you link to the government website hosting this PDF or to a press report conveying this information? My eyes are bleeding from all the ads...
- jorgeortiz85 16y agoRight now it's throwing "500: Internal Server Error"
- mcn 16y agoI had the same reaction, except that I found a bar that moves to be even more distracting than the adds. Hitting full screen (in the middle of the bottom bar) and turning off autohide (move the right toggle up) made it usable for me.
- seldo 16y agoI know this isn't really hacker news, but as a gay hacker, I beg you not to flag this story :-)
- CapitalistCartr 16y agoI am an ardent supporter and promoter of freedom, civil liberty. I've found that most computer geeks are, way out of proportion to the population at large.
- derefr 16y agoWhy not? Not to sound mean, but there are plenty of places online where people could discuss this news; why does HN have to be one of them? Does this community have unique insights into Californian law or gay rights that other communities don't? Does this same news item really need to appear on every online social news site, everywhere, no matter the focus? I guess it's possible that there are people who only read HN, and don't have any other news source whatsoever, and that those people would otherwise miss out on this bit of news—but then, I think those people have chosen to filter out other news sources for a reason :) Edit: I'm just asking for a justification here—if it explicitly isn't Hacker News, what made you want to post it?
- HeyLaughingBoy 16y agoMuch like Slashdot announcing the start of the Iraq invasion, some things are important enough to be visible elsewhere. Restricting the rights of anyone in our country affects all of us who live here.
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- afterburner 16y agoThe system works!
- shotmaker 16y agono it didn't. The people lost.
- ed 16y agoFuck that. the people have no right to vote on individual freedoms
- eli 16y agoHere in DC, there was a movement to get a Prop 8 style ballot initiative to overturn our new gay marriage law. Luckily, the drafters of the DC charter had far better foresight than in California. You're simply not allowed to create a ballot initiative that would violate the Human Rights Act. Period. Doesn't matter how many signatures you get. People have no business voting on how we should treat minority groups.
- yummyfajitas 16y agoWhat do you mean by "minority group"? The polygamous, drug users, people who want to rent rather than own, or people who wish to stay single are all minority groups. Do you favor eliminating all laws which discriminate against such people? I suspect you mean a certain types of minority group. If so, could you explain which minority groups deserve the protection you describe, which do not, and why?
- kjksf 16y agoI guess you're trying to characterize laws that happen to apply to a particular subset of population that you'll label a "minority" and characterize them as "discrimination" hence equal them with laws that are really discriminating. The point you're missing is that those other laws are against behaviors that we find bad for society. We don't have laws that discriminate against drug users as a group (e.g. disallowing drug users to enter restaurants), we just have laws that penalize drug use and distribution. Our laws don't discriminate smokers but penalize smoking. Denying marriage to gays discriminates against gays. It doesn't penalize a behavior. This is not a subtle distinction.
- tome 16y agoAre there any non-religious anti-gay-marriage arguments?
- icarus_drowning 16y agoI haven't found many. A vast majority are "natural law" arguments, which I think are exceedingly weak. A better approach (from a conservative/libertarian side) is to just ask the question why government is defining marriage in the first place.
- eli 16y agoI'm totally with you there. I was really surprised that to get married in New York, the officiant pretty much has to be a judge, the town clerk, or a religious representative of an "official" religion with an established place of worship. Seems awfully unfair that atheists have fewer options than members of popular religions. What possible interest does the state have in vetting wedding officiants anyway?
- kjksf 16y agoIt is a legally binding ceremony so presumably you don't want that to be performed by just anybody. The idea that it's performed by someone who is licensed with the state and therefore officially accepts obligations that come with the right to marry other people seems reasonable to me. As to unfairness, maybe it would be unfair if it would be a trouble to find an officiant that is not a religious representative. The way I see it is that allowing religious representatives to perform a wedding ceremony as accepting societal reality that many people are religious and are more comfortable when wedding is performed by a religious representative but in no way it constitutes harm to non-religious people.
- dieterrams 16y agoI disagree that this is a "conservative/libertarian" question, but I agree that this is the better question to ask.
- chc 16y ago
- qhoxie 16y agoAnyone seeing 500 errors - S3 has all but died in the last few minutes. We are working with them to get things back up and running. Sorry for the inconvenience. http://status.aws.amazon.com/ http://status.aws.amazon.com/
- jblochjohnson 16y agoWhat makes Hacker News cool is that the link is to the actual ruling, which is far more interesting than the articles about this I've seen so far. If you just glanced at the headline, I suggest you dig in...
- redstripe 16y agoExcellent news. I think gay people deserve the right to be just as miserable as us straight people.
- gcb 16y agoi wonder if the mormons try to get polygamy going amidst all that gay marriage talk that would be interesting.
- cynest 16y agoOnly a subset of mormons (fundamentalist LDS). Also, I doubt they'd want to legally marry their wives: single mothers collect more benefits.
- cj 16y agoHow did this leave the front page so quickly? Hm...
- adammichaelc 16y agoI am likely a minority voice on HN on this topic and with so many strong feelings about this I will likely be down-voted for these arguments, but in the spirit of bringing out another side to the debate so that a full discussion can happen, I'd like to bring up a few thoughts against the court-ruling. I rarely hear about how state-approved same-sex marriage will impact freedom of religion. Personal feelings aside, religous groups should have the freedom to practice their religion according to their conscience. They each have a right to preach their interpretation of right and wrong, and shouldn't be forced into the current policially correct view. For example, I could see a pastor or rabbi or other religous leader feeling uncomfortable about marrying 2 people of the same sex, and then being sued for a civil rights violation with the full force of the state to back up the couple's lawsuit. Another example that comes to mind is religous colleges that offer married student housing being forced to let a same-sex couple live in the housing; in this situation the school could be sued for discrimination and potentially lose tax-exempt status unless they comply. These 2 examples are compelling to me because they are realistic scenarios post-today's ruling and they represent a power-grab by the government over a religion's conscience-driven decisions about what is right and wrong. We shouldn't hand over these religious decisions to bureaucrats. It seems that by officially sanctioning same-sex marriage, we are heading towards a collision course between church and state, which is troubling from a religious-freedom perspective. In an ideal world, marriage wouldn't be a state-driven issue at all, but left to the religions themselves to define. Obviously this isn't an option; at the very least we should be careful about how much more power we want to give the government about our individual conscience-driven religous choices.
- brandon 16y agoFact 19 from the findings of the court, emphasis mine: "Marriage in the United States has always been a civil matter. Civil authorities may permit religious leaders to solemnize marriages but not to determine who may enter or leave a civil marriage. Religious leaders may determine independently whether to recognize a civil marriage or divorce but that recognition or lack thereof has no effect on the relationship under state law." How this fits in with college housing, for example, I could not say. I will say, though, that the situation you're describing sounds awful discriminatory.
- 16y ago