My friend Mike pointed out this CNN article as a legal balance to the religious argument in my previous post.

On Prop 8, it’s the evidence, stupid

Editor’s note: Lisa Bloom is the managing partner of The Bloom Firm, where she practices civil and criminal law.

(CNN) — There’s a big difference between a political debate about same-sex marriage and the recent hard-fought court challenge to the California ban, Proposition 8.

In politics, anything goes: Vague, sinister comments about same-sex marriage threatening children or undermining the sanctity of heterosexual marriage were prevalent during the Prop 8 campaign. In court, same-sex marriage opponents needed solid evidence to back up these and other claims.

Despite “able and energetic counsel,” they never produced it. That’s why they lost, resoundingly, in the federal district court. And that lack of evidence should dog opponents up through the chain of appeals that is now beginning, because appellate courts are required to review only the evidence in the court record and to give great deference to Judge Vaughn Walker’s findings of fact. He was there, after all, presiding over the trial, and the appellate judges weren’t.

And what a lopsided trial he presided over. All the anti-same-sex marriage arguments imploded when subjected to the rules of evidence.
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This exposition by Rita Nakashima Brock was published in today’s Huffington Post. It’s worth a read.

Prop 8, Judge Walker and the Biblical View of Marriage Equality

Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision Thursday to allow resumption of legal same-sex weddings in California has right-wing Christians claiming his ruling against Proposition 8 threatens “Bible believing Christians.” I’ve read the Bible pretty carefully myself (I read it cover to cover when I was in high school) and even taught it as a college professor. It is not a source I’d turn to in order to defend traditional marriage, but I think it does offer ways to think about ethical marriage.

The Bible presents multiple views of marriage, and most actual marriages it depicts are terrible by modern standards. “Traditional marriages” in ancient biblical times were arranged as transfers of the ownership of daughters. The tenth commandment lists wives among properties like houses and slaves: “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor” (Exodus 20:17, also found in Deuteronomy 5:21). Marriages occurred via deception, kidnapping, adulterous seductions, theft, rape, and murder, and were often in multiples so that the pater familias could amass land, flocks, and progeny and cement political alliances. Abraham, David, and Solomon had marriages that would be illegal today. The book of Hosea likens the mercy of God to a husband who has the right to beat or kill his adulterous wife, but spares her — for this, she was supposed to be grateful. When women seek marriages, such as Naomi arranged for Ruth, it was to avoid an even worse fate such as destitution.
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For years — at least as long as the legal debate swirling around California’s Prop 8 — my honey has always said, “We don’t need to get married to show our commitment. It’s just a piece of paper”, whenever I mentioned the topic.

Last week after Prop 8 was overturned (for now, at least), he surprised me by saying, “Do you think we’ll be able to get legally married by the time of our 25th anniversary [2013]?”

Shocked me, as I had given up on even discussing it with him. I guess he really is committed to our relationship

Mark Morford from the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate writes a mean opinion page.

Gay marriage makes the world shrug

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Argentina, at last check, is not yet writhing in flames. Canada, as far as I can see from my window, is still right up there, stoic and mild, smelling of pine trees and bitumen, watching lots of hockey, shooting guns, being Canadian. The Netherlands? Why, still crisp and clean, efficiently blonde as ever. It’s shocking, really.

After all, you’d think they’d be downright miserable. You’d think they’d be in country-wide group therapy, hating and hurling and spitting, maybe a few riots, some stabbings, panic in the streets, the very fabric of their various shell-shocked societies unraveling like Mel Gibson at a bat mitzvah.

In fact, it would appear that millions of people across a surprisingly large number of dashing, industrious countries all over the world — including Belgium, Spain, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal and even adorable little Iceland — are still not yet imploding, not yet suffering the furious wrath of God, not yet dying in unchecked anguish before our very eyes.

What to make of it? After all, in each and every one of these sinful nations, gay people have been happily and legally getting married (and, presumably, divorced, remarried and tossed about on the same socio-emotional rollercoaster as their straight brethren) every single day, for months and years and — in the case of the Netherlands — nearly a decade now.

What the hell is wrong with them? Didn’t they get the newsletter? Don’t they know how very wrong, sinful, sick and perverted they all so obviously are? Haven’t they heard the hoarse wails of the terrified Mormon elders, the raspy screams of the obsolete Vatican, the tightened bowels of confused fundamentalists of nearly every major religion worldwide, all of them absolutely positive that allowing certain kinds of consenting adults who love each other to get married will spell the end of civilization, families, innocence, the military, God’s bitter and judgmental love as we know it? Someone should send them a pamphlet.
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We were years behind in freeing the slaves as well.

Mexican court upholds capital’s gay marriage law
By MARK STEVENSON (AP)

MEXICO CITY — The Mexican Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a fledgling law allowing same-sex marriages in Mexico City is constitutional, rejecting an appeal by federal prosecutors who argued that it violated the charter’s guarantees to protect the family.
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