Wednesday, August 04, 2010

More.

Loving v. Virginia was decided two months before I was born. Marriage equality continues to evolve on a timeline that parallels my own; California's Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional today, twenty years on the dot--and almost to the hour--from my own state-sanctioned opposite wedding. It was a long time ago and I was young and clueless.

Tonight I'm sifting through the reaction online and watching Maddow while nursing my stitched-up elbow. Judge Walker's findings of fact echo every argument for equality made on this blog and countless others. It's a dream ruling, written in dream language--fuck, I could have written big chunks of it, save for the inability to use the word fuck in judicial documents--and it appears to be watertight at a level I never dared hope for. In a judicial equivalent of holding the playground bully at arm's length with a hand on the forehead while he flails away impotently with fists that won't hit the mark, Walker issued a stay on his ruling that gives the H8ers until Friday to take their best shot at filing their appeals. Given the laughable lack of coherence the defense exhibited in his courtroom during testimony, I don't think he's very worried about what will happen when the case hits the Ninth Circuit.

Walker's ruling was heavily based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the same 14th that Sens. McConnell, Graham, McCain, and Kyl are so anxious to overturn that they can't help hopping from foot to foot. So boom, in one fell swoop the 14th becomes a rally point for attacking fecund Latinas and domestic-minded gays. The more interesting things get, well, the more interesting they get.

Ted Olson, one half of the team that argued against Prop 8, on Maddow tonight:

We've got to stop thinking about equality in terms of conservative or liberal. We need to start thinking about the fact that gay and lesbian citizens are our brothers and our sisters; they're entitled to equal places in our society. That should be a conservative value, it is also a liberal value, it is not something that should split us.

Von dein Mund, etc. And on we go.

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