Lessig

@Andy:

You do know that the government permitting gay marriages to occur isn't the same thing as the government *forcing* churches to perform them, right? No law or court decision has mandated the latter, ever.

Many marriages do occur in religious establishments. But many also occur in secular ones--and most of the marriages that just got erased were almost certainly in the latter category. So long as government recognizes marriages as such, and gives them a presumption of rights beyond those given to domestic partnerships/civil unions, for policy purposes it should be considered a secular institution.

Sorry for the offtopic post, but if you'll bear with me, I have to get something off my chest.

When I was in first grade, our class saw "Lady and the Tramp". I loved the part where the Tramp gets a real license at the end of the movie. I cried. It was beautiful. I knew that someday I wanted to have that same experience with my own dog.

I grew up counting the days until I was old enough to have my own dog, and I finally got one. But you know what. The magic wasn't there. I really tried, but dogs are not for me. They smell. They tear up lawns, they make awful messes. I guess I'm just not a dog person.

After years of soul searching, I found that I'm more of a fish person. I found just the right fish for me - the fish that I wanted to have until death do we part. I couldn't wait to get our license. I already purchased a frame for the license certificate and knew exactly where I wanted to hang it.

I nearly floated with anticipation as I went down to the city offices. I told the secretary that I'd like to get a license for my fish. I even showed her a picture of my beauty. I was completely shocked when she told me that they only license dogs and cats.

'Why?', I asked, trying to keep back the tears.

She gave some sort of excuse about how licensing allows them to know who to prosecute when a dog or cat gets abandoned or bites somebody. She said that the city had no reason to record and track my fish ownership. I could tell from the way she looked at me, that she was a fish-hater.

'Fish are pets too! Fish can bite! Haven't you ever see Jaws? What do you have against fish, you bigot?!'.

She said, 'There's no law against having a fish. We don't care if you have a fish!'

Don't care. I think that about sums it up.

I still haven't told Nemo, yet. I guess the blank space on the wall says it all.

What? The fact that the majority of people have spoken *twice* on this issue is not enough? Do we have to go through this a third time? a fourth time? Is Gavin Newsom's words "here it comes whether you like it or not!" to be immortalized? How about accepting No as an answer.

I'm sure that Lessig's plea for this not to go to the supreme court will fall on deaf ears, because it's what unhappy gays do - they sue. And, once it does reach the supreme court, the conservative right will once again have an issue to galvanize it and like Bush W was put into office on this issue once again we will see another red state president.

As an aside, liberals would do very well to recognize that this election was more about a protest than a mandate. That's certainly why I voted for Obama.

The AP reports: "Blacks strongly voted for the ban, while whites narrowly opposed it. Latinos and Asians were split. Voters under 30 heavily opposed Proposition 8, while voters 65 and over supported the initiative. Age groups in between were split. The ban on same-sex marriage was opposed by voters who graduated from college and those who said they never attended religious services. Those who said they attend religious services weekly heavily backed the ban."

So to change the outcome you must cross racial, educational, and religious divides... This is not a logical fight, it's an emotional one, and as such a very uphill battle. Or we can just work on suppressing the black vote! ;-)

@Andy I agree. We could also keep the benefits of partnerships and have civil unions for one and all, gay or straight. If you wanted to have a religiously approved marriage, you could do that in your own church, without the fear that government would impose on religious groups.

While I've always been a supporter of equal rights, this issue has struck me more now than ever before. In 10 short days I'll marry my partner. I'll be legally allowed to marry my partner. And my friends who've had longer relationships, who own homes together, who have kids, who are in committed, loving marriages, will have to wonder if those commitments will once again be invalidated.

Last week when when my partner and I stood before a clerk at the county offices in San Mateo I realized that it was awfully silly that the document we received had to be completed, signed and sent in by a state-deputized official (judge or deputy for a day) or a member of clergy ordained to perform marriages. Those are two different offices with completely different purposes.

Please, add me to your group of people who would like to help in this new effort. Discrimination doesn't rest and neither should we.

Portraying this as a civil rights issue is likely to invite sustained resistance, unless and until the opponents recognize the chromosomal origin of homosexuality.

So long as half the voters presume the lifestyle is elective, they will not see gays as humans with equal rights.

@voted: the people campaigning for equality are divisive? Not the people campaigning to seperate the world into those who are permitted to marry and those who aren't? I don't see your logic.

@voted: the people campaigning for equality are divisive? Not the people campaigning to seperate the world into those who are permitted to marry and those who aren't? I don't see your logic.

An election 2 years in the making just ended. The people have voted, and a majority want to preserve marriage. Less than 12 hours later, you want to continue the relentless divisiveness of campaigning?

Thanks for letting me delete some more subscriptions off my reader. I had thought I narrowed it down pretty good, but some more political fat needs to be cut from this never ending election cycle. Thanks!

@voted, yes, because my state just voted to deny civil rights to fellow citizens, I want to take up the challenge right now. I'm only sorry it took twelve hours to so say.

8 years ago, Prop 22 passed 61-39. Yesterday, Prop 8 passed 52-48 if that.

If we can, collectively, convince 150,000 of our fellow citizens that we respect their religious beliefs but we would don't believe they should legislate those beliefs for all people; that we can live and let live; that going down the path of taking away rights is not a positive step for America or California, then there is no reason this law should last.

I'm ready. I'm not stopping, and I'm not going to let this stand. And my preferred way to do this is at the ballot box.

Then how about someone set up a site to get this going. I'll cover any costs.

In all honesty, I'm a person who is completely ambivalent to the gay marriage cause. It is a major topic not so much because it is a human right but more because it is a political polemic that allows politicians to sway voters.

The idea that a government has any business telling people who they can or cannot dedicate their lives to is ridiculous. Furthermore, religion has always been the dominant definer of marriage and for the state to demand the religious institutions define it in any way is also wrong. Instead of looking at the real issue of returning the civil rights of gay people, for example insurance, politicians on both sides have made a ploy to take away the right of religion to define its own institution.

While I know that it might heartbreak some people that the Catholic church will not be forced to marry them, I think there are much better solutions to this problem. I would challenge politicians, insurers, business owners, and all our fellow americans to take religion completely out of the picture. Strike from law any benefits for two people being married and allow religion define itself.

marriage - a fundamental right for straight people; a political goal for gay people - but don't worry, well meaning straight people promise to help us with the politics.

if this is the best you've got on the topic - why don't you say nothing for a good long well and at least allow us the dignity of our own sorrow and the righteousness of our own anger.

The utter irony of this vote (and hypocrisy) is stunning and sad. Blogged here (from a scientist's perspective).

@Phill,

>> How about accepting No as an answer.

You mean like Thomas Edison?

Or Rosa Parks?

Oh, I know, you mean like Martin Luther King Jr.?

Or maybe you meant Barack "NObama" Obama?

Or maybe you meant something else altogether?

Or maybe you forgot to realize that if every time someone said "No" we simply gave up we'd all still be swimming in the ocean aggravated and frustrated by the fact that we'll never be anything more than lonely, asexual creatures that procreate by ripping ourselves in half just because we have no other option.

Thank God my amoebic ancestors got sick and tired of being told to go fuck themselves and decided to try something new for a change.

Hey, wait a second... If evolution began with asexual one celled organisms such as amoebas, and continued through the rebellious nature of intelligent life getting sick and tired of ripping themselves in half for some sort of obscure asexual reproductive pleasure, wouldn't that technically mean that we were all born of gay parents?

Seems reasonable, but then again so does the idea of dinosaurs roaming the planet millions of years before man was but a glimmer in its fathers (sic) (or would it be mothers (sic)? ;-) one-celled lack-of-an-eye and yet there are still those -- not oddly the same types of folks who tend to insist that separation of church and state only applies to other peoples churches and states (and /definitely/ not their guns! ;-)) -- who insist that the earth is 6000 years old, dinosaur fossils proven to date back millions of years were in fact placed there by God as a test of our faith, and Wasilla, Alaska is where all of man kind will seek out refuge in the last days and either come unto "God" or perish by the hand of some jaw grinding methhead who's been up for the last six days having "visions" and tearing him/herself -- quite literally -- apart such that they feel something different than the current pain of being trapped inside the body of something they never intended nor wanted to be.

And so the recursive act of the (re)evolution of life is "Born Again."

As oil, for the time being, and ironically enough /millions/ of years later, but "Born Again" none-the-less! ;-)

Oh, and Phill? As to your point: "How about accepting No as an answer."

No. Respectfully no, but no none-the-less.

@Thomas: "I do feel strongly that this issue should be decided by referendum or by legislature and not in the courts."

In 2005 and then again in 2007, the California legislature passed bills in support of same-sex marriage and both times the decisions were vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger (I guess this makes him an "activist governor"). The issue arrived at the Supreme Court only as a consequence of these vetoes. So many people seem to have no idea that these bills ever actually passed. Ignorance of these facts has made it much easier for the Yes on 8 side to mislead voters with specious arguments about activist judges and "the will of the people".

In passing, I should note that Obama let me down already--he had the political capital to spare to come out against proposition 8 and he didn't. And so it goes. I still think he can be a great, transformational president, but this was a terrible disappointment, and a mistake which I believe he will come to regret.

I am disappointed, but not (yet) dismayed. Having lived in Colorado through the passage of their Amendment 2 in 1992, through the resulting Supreme Court decision in 1996 (look up "Romer v. Evans"), I feel that there is a very strong chance that this too will make its way to the SCOTUS and its proponents will have to explain how a measure whose title begins with the phrase, "Eliminate the right..." does not violate the equal rights and protections language in sec. 1 of the 14th amendment. While I plan to support any ongoing efforts that grow out of the opposition to 8's passage, I'm not going to consider this matter over until the last court ruling.

(And to anyone else who thinks that a majority of citizens should be able to strip basic human rights from a given group:

(1) Churches would no more be "forced" to perform a gay marriage they opposed to than they would be "forced" to perform a wedding for me, an atheist. A Catholic priest already has the right to not perform a wedding for non-Catholics.

(2) A majority of people passed the anti-mixed-race-marriage law that was overturned by the CA state supreme court in 1948, too. I'm sure that had they put that to a vote, the people would have kept it in place. If you support 8, do you also support a return of anti-miscegenation laws?

(3) Who's next? Couples that cannot, or choose not to, have children? How about just sticking with Leviticus and banning shellfish, mixed-fiber clothing, and any woman being in a position of authority over a man? Seriously-- when I did go to church, I was taught that one read and lived by the tenets of the whole Bible, not just the parts you felt like.)

@thoughtful: polygamy ... if kids aren't being abused, i would much prefer it if you'd please be so kind as to leave me to practice my perversions in private. i will, likewise, leave you to practice yours in private. thus, if i should choose to have a committed relationship with multiple consenting adults (with or without birth control) ... hey, it's private.

also, i don't buy for an instant that your vote wasn't about fear or hate, at its root. if you can't or won't explain it, i don't have any other thing to explain it, because the only arguments i've ever heard boil down to that.

"traditional family values" means "not like my family," or at least, "not like the family i want."

"the bible says" means "i don't respect your beliefs, but i want to enshrine mine into law."

"homosexuality isn't natural" indicates a fear of sexuality that isn't my own, understanding and of the evolving scientific understanding of human sexuality.

these are really the only arguments i've ever heard that weren't completely specious, such as the stupid education ads that came out in california this cycle.

so ... enlighten us. why ELSE would you vote against it?

Larry,
I would gladly do a show or series of shows similar to the structure of the Corruption show I did with you (mashup up of diverse viewpoints around universal question with a lot of audience involvement if some of this goodwill and concern about the issue now could fund them.

As you know I was very involved in trying to stop prop 8 and put out a call to geeks, sadly too late . The Net involvement really picked up a great deal in the last couple of weeks due to a 100&volunteer group of mostly queer geeks who just showed up at the campaign and made it better. In the last few weeks No showed much greater momentum than the Yes side. But the bottom up / grassroots approach came too late for the official campaign which unfortunately chose not to focus on this approach from the beginning and so the energy spread too late. As far as I know there were no dollars dedicated to the Net as recently as a month ago and the campaigns focus was really targeted on people in the

I and many other gay people have our own need for honest, to love and desire that drives us to come out. Our families have their love for us and, our leadership (it took me 10 years with my family) in our case, our wedding(s) provided an amazing moment for that. But many Californians may not have these drivers.

I agree that we need to engage people more deeply and we need to reach farther to connect with the support that is already there to make our case. I also agree that the Courts, while we may have good legal arguments, aren't going to give us the feeling of safety and understanding that comes from the hard work of actually meeting each other and reaching out to each other If Barack Obama's campaign taught me anything, it was that.

My hunch is that there are many religious people who feel that they want to "come out" about who they are in terms of their faith and they feel harmed somehow, by my being gay and married. They probably want affirmation and acknowledgment too. I've yet to meet a human being who doesn't.

There were almost no gay faces in the No on 8 Campaign. Young folks support gay marriage likely because they know and care about gay people. We need to at least meet each other in a space in which we do not have to be afraid of being physically harmed for existing.

The City of San Francisco has already filed a suit and the official No on 8 Campaign is awaiting absentee ballots. My geeky desire is to just do this. I see that same desire in your post and in others. What can we actually do? We know that over time, the older folks who supported Yes on 8 will die and that younger people strongly favour inclusion in gay marriage. We can wait or we can engage.

The thing I know how to contribute is to host a live conversation that will let us dig into he kinds of things the campaigns didn't. The reality is that many Californians feel very differently about what exactly/ I'm not completely convinced that everyone felt they were voting on the right of gay people to be married. Did they feel they were voting against discrimination/ for gay equality? for their faith? How do we know?

Even if we appeal up the US Supreme Court and win, is that a great idea? I know my parents only really moved to acceptance of me when I really emotionally didn't need it any more. I moved on in my life. It was inevitable. that inevitability is probably really scary and horrible to a lot of people. In my parents' case they knew and loved me. I feel like that shift may be part of the puzzle here.

From the stuff many Yes on 8 people are writing on my postings, they are sometimes convinced they platonically love me while opposing my marriage or they are plain terrified and angry that I exist.

Blame is just purely unproductive. It is up to us to grieve our genuine pain and make a better case. I believe that includes sharing the reality of our lives. We are facing very difficult times. Do people who voted yes on 8 really think all the gay Californians aren't needed to make things better and vice versa? Neither of us is going to disappear.

So please let me know if you'd be game to try one. If we think it works,and people are behind it, we can do more. Others on this site please let me know if you'd be able to fund this shows/forums/webcasts/space where people can engage. If you'd be game to contribute time or money or have other ideas, add them to this wiki.

Last night was first so joyful and then so very painful. I am feeling the first moment of peace since Yes on 8 became. Thanks for your offer to do something Larry. I was feeling like straight Californians didn't really care about my life a few weeks ago. The response to yesterdays loss has shown me that's just not the case.

heather

@keef
"As it stands now, the 401k (the American retirement fund) will not go to anyone but a spouse, because that word is written in and defined as a man and a woman."

Baloney. A single person can name any beneficiary they want in their 401K. A single person has a lot more freedom in deciding who gets their 401K than a married person does. A more appropriate example of something gay couples can't get would be Social Security survivor benefits.

However, that too, is a federal benefit, which thanks to Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act, is still out of the reach of gay couples, regardless of whether any state legally marries them or not.

In California, having a Gay marriage in California gets you all the negatives of marriage, but not much in the way of positives. The big marriage benefits (beyond what a domestic partnership gets you) are at the federal level:

Positives of a California Gay Marriage:
-----------------------------------------------------
1) You can have a state official say, "yep, you're married"
2) ...?

Negatives:
----------------
1) Your intimate friendship is registered by the State in a Big Brother sort of way
2) In most cases, you're forced to share incomes and debts
3) this requirement of mutual support often continues after the relationship is terminated
4) Expectations of fidelity
5) Termination of this special friendship requires state approval, and can take a long time to happen

Lessig is spot on when he says the case has not been made effectively. Calling it an equal rights issue isn't enough. Equal rights to what? Right to have a special Cinderella moment in a State building? We need something more compelling. If there are significant things being denied at the state level, that is what needs to be communicated.

But what I am suggesting is this - secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering into the public square. Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, Williams Jennings Bryant, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King - indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history - were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause. So to say that men and women should not inject their "personal morality" into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition
~
Barack Obama

If people feel that their religious values are being hurt by legislation it is their responsibility to stand up. It's the right of the people to ultimately make the legislation by the people for the people. This is what makes this such a great country. There is always going to be a push between two groups and the winner will write history and they will deem themselves to by the good side and the other evil.

The founding fathers were all very religious, when it is written the seperate church from state it means they don't want a dictator telling them how they can worship they never considered that they should leave their faiths at the door. "In God We Trust" This is their testimonies to you that they believe in God and God was in their work.

I ask my liberal brothers and conservative problems to stop the personal attacks, don't stand on corners and yell out profanities ( I have seen it from both sides and it's disgusting) I saw people going to church that had to walk past protestors yelling in their faces please use your minds not your anger! We are all people and deserve to vote how we wish.

I will not tell you how I voted because it will only cause more anger. Please don't try to prove the other wrong state what you understand to be true and then move on. The more you yell at me about being wrong the more inspired I will be to vote inspite of you.

Treat your fellow Americans with respect

The biggest reason that Prop 8, the bigotry amendment passed, is turnout. Voting turnout, especially in San Francisco, was far lower than predicted. SF turnout was 33% lower than 2004!

more numbers to support this

The largest barrier to reversing Prop 8 is getting younger voters to show up.

Mckenzie and Karen:

How soon people forget that the Catholics were put of their adoption charity work by gay activists. The church merely wished to operate under their belief that children should not be placed with a gay couple. The state however would not allow them to practice this because it does not respects the catholic religions opinions on homosexuality.

Churches have already been sued and lost for not allowing gay couples to use their facilities to get married in. (A specific case was in Masachussetts involving the methodist church) It is only a matter of time before the lawsuits stack up requiring the churches to marry. To believe otherwise is naive.

This morning on the news they broadcast the anti prop 8 demonstration from last night and the protester speaking directly attacked the mormon church blaming them for the passage of the amendment. The protester vowed to "take down the church". This is the type of hatred that gay people are supposedly against. I think this underlies the true motives of a lot of people and that is to eradicate any influence from religion that might be counter to their own views, and they have no problem legislating religions rights out. The gay rights activists are really no different than those they oppose, they just want different content in the restrictions.

For a long time, I’ve viewed this as a simple matter of the exercise of religious freedom. Granted, there are many religious organizations strictly dedicated to a “traditional” ideal of marriage, but there are many groups which do not hold to those beliefs: and whether you’re talking about a liberal-minded church willing to marry two men, or an orthodox Mormon or Muslim group willing to engage in polygamy, a country like the United States, with her founding roots in the search for the freedom to practice one’s own religion as one sees fit, should make sure to stand out of the way of these practices.

For a very long time, I felt the best answer was for the state governments to refuse to recognize any marriages. Rather, recognize civil unions, which would have the benefit of allowing churches and church congregations to determine who they married, while the government’s only responsibility was in ensuring legal protections over such unions, without passing judgement on which were or were not “valid.” I felt this was a fair and reasonable compromise, but my opinions have been shifting, in no small part due to this YouTube video of San Diego’s Mayor Sanders explaining why he’d made the decision to support gay marriage over civil unions: “Two years ago, I believed civil unions were a fair alternative. Those beliefs, in my case, have changed. The concept of a separate but equal institution is not something I can support.”

It seems unlikely that any state government, much less all fifty of them, will decide to adopt my plan. Therefore, civil unions, while a good start, are simply not good enough. Marriage for homosexual couples needs to be the law. Yes, the world isn’t fair, and yes, the United States isn’t fair. Our country is chock full of examples of acts of persecution to minority groups: slavery, segregation and Jim Crow laws, the internment of Japanese-American in relocation camps, need I go on? In time, all of these past horrors have been refuted: George H.W. Bush apologized to the Japanese interned, and most famously, this very week, our nation elected its first African-American to the office of the President of the United States.

I know that a lot of people have trouble wrapping their minds around the concept of gay marriage. They usually talk about the next step being men marrying trash dumpsters or something. At some point they usually reference the threat to their own marriage, but I’ll let Barbara Boxer make that point (er, even though I’m not, y’know, married).

I think gay marriage is the civil rights question of our time. I also think that it is inevitable. Oh, you can delay it, you can slow it down, but it’s coming. I hear stories of what people think gay marriage will mean: particularly ludicrous imaginations seem to envision armed Federal troops compelling some right-wing minister to marry a leering gay couple at gunpoint. I will never advocate for the government telling a church what people they must marry, at the same time, I will not tolerate the government telling a church what people they may not marry, which is what happens now when gay-marriage friendly churches marry a couple whose union can not legally be recognized.

If you value freedom, if you value the freedom of people to make choices that you might not agree with, choices that you would never advocate, this is a cause for you. If you’re one of those people who will disagree vehemently with your neighbors over politics, but know in your heart of heart that you would fight for their right to express their disagreement, then you know what side you need to be on. This isn’t an issue for the left, the posted YouTube video above proved that. This is an issue for all Americans who truly value the unique characteristics which make up our mixing bowl of a nation.

I’m a proud supporter of the right of the American people to follow their pursuit of happiness, and to do so right into the marriage bed, regardless of their sexual preferences. Support of gay marriage is support of freedom of choice. It really is as absolutely simple as that.

I just want to say from a South African - that it can be done, it is possible for people to see and act beyond their fears. And this rejection is fear-based make no mistake. Keep the real faith - people are people wherever they are and the majority are bigots only by having fear-cramped minds.

Greg: I don't think you were talking to a real morman. In case there are no mormons reading this blog to defed their church, this is their churches position for their website:

“I wish to state categorically that this Church has nothing whatever to do with those practicing polygamy. They are not members of this Church. Most of them have never been members … If any of our members are found to be practicing plural marriage, they are excommunicated, the most serious penalty the Church can impose. Not only are those so involved in direct violation of the civil law, they are in violation of the law of this Church.”

http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2588eb644ad72110VgnVCM100000176f620aRCRD&vgnextchannel=3e0511154963d010VgnVCM1000004e94610aRCRD

Here is an article, called "Unamendments," on when constitutional amendments are unconstitutional: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=803864
[available for free downloading]

You're off the mark here. Prop 8 is about civil rights, and civil rights issues are almost never correctly decided by simple majority rule. If segregation had been decided by simple majority voting, it would still be the law of the land in many places. While I understand your undertones, that forcing this issue down people's throats is going to be very divisive, sometimes it's a necessary evil when dealing with the close minded mob.

There's a reason why the Bill of Rights is so powerful -- because it _cannot_ be overruled by a simple majority.

Maybe the black community is so FN stupid that they thought they were voting YES on a section 8 issue.

To the original poster: I agree with your strategy!!

TO ALL WHO DO NOT SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE:

I think you're good people, like me. I pay my taxes that support my schools and religious institutions so they can give back to the community. I don't hurt anyone and only try to help. I oppose people who try to infringe on religious freedoms, and I don't seek to infringe upon what "marriage" means to you. I appreciate that most of you DO approve of 'domestic partnerships' and 'civil unions' for gay people, but please listen to why that doesn't work.

The federal government gives married people about 1000 rights. The state gives them about 400 additional rights. The reason the government is involved in marriage at all is to promote and protect stable, happy families as basic units of society. Obviously marriage is not solely for procreation, as we do not remove that right from you if you are infertile, elderly, or choose not to have children. When you marry, you are automatically entitled to those 1400 rights, including the right to visit a spouse in the hospital, be added to your spouse's insurance policies, acquire property with your spouse and automatically inherit it if your spouse dies, and many more. These 1400 rights are not simply and easily written up in a single civil document, nor always enforceable; for instance, a person under a state's domestic partnership can't force the IRS to give him the tax breaks afforded to married couples. It is extremely complex and doesn't always work; I am aware of gay people whose partners died and the deceased's hostile family successfully asserted their ownership of everything in spite of the contract, leaving the survivor destitute. Imagine children being involved, and a deceased partner's hostile family takes your children from you because your civil contract didn't stand up in court proving you were next of kin! In Arkansas, the majority just voted to prohibit unmarried people from adopting, meaning a gay person can't even adopt their partner's children to ensure that if their partner dies the children will remain with the surviving parent they love!

'Civil unions' and 'domestic partnerships' permit OSTENSIBLY most of the 400 state-afforded rights of married couples, but NONE of the 1000 federal ones, and I can tell you from personal experience that the state ones are NOT equal. Just one example is that to get on my partner's insurance policy, we had to provide my certificate of domestic partnership, copies of financial records proving we had co-mingled finances and lived in the same home for at least two years, and more. If I died, my partner would have to wait at least two years to add her new partner to the policy to prove the relationship was 'real'. Married people don't even need to provide a copy of a marriage license, and if their spouse died today, they could add a new spouse tomorrow. This is only one example out of MANY.

Other rights are specific to helping children of married people, including ensuring automatic inheritance rights, the right of a non-blood related parent to pick up a sick child from school, alimony and child support to help with their care in the event of divorce, and many more. No matter the makeup of the family or how it comes to be -- be it traditional nuclear, or grandparents raising their grandchild, or a blended family resulting from divorced people remarrying, or single parents, or adoptive parents, or childless couples, or gay couples -- ALL of these people deserve the same rights so they have the best chances of happiness and contribution to society.

What I would like to see the FEDERAL government do is create one proto-marriage type of relationship ('civil union'?) that applies equally to all people who want it, including granting them all 1400 of the rights and responsibilities that "married" people currently enjoy, and then simply leave the word "marriage" for religiously-inclined people who want to further consecrate their relationship according to their religions. I think that is what the MAJORITY of us all want. Unfortunately, the federal government is currently leaving the issue to states to decide, so we are stuck wrestling for the one word that currently encompasses all 1400 of those rights, and that word is "marriage". Granting the existing rights encompassed by one word to a minority is a lot easier than changing 1400 laws to encompass them. That's really all there is to it, see?

I understand many of you are afraid that legalizing gay marriage will lead to your children being forced to learn in school that homosexuality is "normal". I will be the first to agree with you that homosexuality is NOT "normal" - the parts don't fit and we can't make babies. But consider that in one out of every 100 live births, a child is born with ambiguous genitalia (intersexed). If God creates 1% of babies that way, why do we then do surgery to "correct" them to one sex or the other and make them "normal"? God made me abnormal too - I'm among the small percentage of people whose wiring is crossed so I'm attracted to my own sex. My abnormality doesn't lead me to hurt anyone. The worst law I've ever broken is the speed limit. Learning that homosexuals exist isn't going to turn any child homosexual, but it will help the small percentage born with this abnormality to feel less alone. That's really the worst that could happen.

As for the slippery slope arguments that legalizing gay marriage will automatically lead to legalizing polygamy or incestuous marriages, those forms of marriage existed throughout most of recorded history but are too impractical or undesirable for the vast majority of Americans to even consider. As for legalizing gay marriage leading to legalizing people marrying pets or children, these can't even give informed consent. Please stay off the slippery slope; the ONLY topic we're asking you to agree on is legalizing gay marriage.

We gay people and our families are being hurt by laws as they stand, and all we are asking for is the concession that the word "marriage" include us so we may enjoy its rights - and responsibilities. I will leave you with the words of Mildred Loving, who wrote this forty years after her 1967 legal case struck down laws barring interracial marriage:

"Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the 'wrong kind of person' for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry."

Peace.

Our country is a country of contrasts, and this election illustrates the contrast. On the one hand, we can demonstrate that we are capable of rising above our prejudices, and the majority of voters can accept a person of color as our commander in chief. On the other, we can (amidst one of the most liberal states in the Union) vote to eliminate a basic human right, establishing a policy of discrimination directly in our Constitution.

We have a long way to go.

The thing I find particularly dismaying is that the people who traditionally have found themselves to be the target of discrimination were themselves the difference in this election: that amongst African-American and Hispanic voters, we found many who were willing to choose discrimination for their fellow citizens.

In Brown v. the Board of Education, the Supreme Court claimed that the doctrine of "separate but equal" with respect to schooling was a sham: that there could be no separate school system which allowed African-Americans to fully participate in our society as was their right. With respect, I disagree with Professor Lessig regarding legal challenges against Proposition 8. Without Brown v. B.O.E, blacks would have remained in separate schools, perhaps not forever, but perhaps for decades, and we wouldn't have our current President-elect.