Proposition 8 opponents urge federal court to lift order preventing gays from marrying

Lawyers challenging Proposition 8 urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to lift an order preventing gays from marrying and called on the California Supreme Court to speed up its review of a key issue in the case.

The legal team trying to overturn the 2008 ballot measure asked the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to lift its hold on a federal district court judge’s order declaring the ban on gay nuptials unconstitutional. The request is considered a long shot.

The challengers asked that the stay be removed on the grounds that the California Supreme Court is going to delay the case roughly another year and that even President Obama has said bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional.

The attempt to place pressure on the judges comes as the state’s high court considers whether initiative sponsors are entitled to defend a ballot measure when state officials refuse to do so. California officials declined to appeal the ruling last August by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn R. Walker overturning the measure.

The sponsors of Proposition 8, ProtectMarriage, did appeal, but the 9th Circuit has said it was uncertain whether they had the legal right to do so.

The 9th Circuit asked the state court to rule on the so-called “standing” question as it considers Walker’s ruling. But the involvement of the state court is expected to delay a decision in the case for many months.

The California court has said it would hold a hearing “as early as September,” which would delay a ruling until the end of the year. The state high court does not hold arguments in July or August. But lawyers fighting Proposition 8 say that gay men and lesbians are being hurt every day a decision in the case is delayed.

RELATED:

California Supreme Court will decide key issue in same-sex-marriage legal fight

-- Maura Dolan

Comments

[Dozzer]

Can you please tell me, how they are being hurt. Please, Please tell me.

[coco]

"Can you please tell me, how they are being hurt. Please, Please tell me."Are you kidding? If someone told me I couldn't marry my fiance, I would consider that an injury just on its own.

But, here are some more specific ways that gay couples are hurt by marriage inequality:

- denied the right to legally co-parent a child
- denied joint-adoption rights
- denied hospital visitation
- denied the ability to acquire legal residence for a partner who is a non-citizen
- denied automatic inheritance rights
- denied bereavement and sick leave if the partner dies or is ill
- denied the ability to have joint insurance policies
- denied the right to wrongful death benefits
- denied the right to benefit from the partner's entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, veteran's benefits, etc.
- denied the ability to request child support, alimony, etc. in the case of the dissolution of a partnership

So, I've listed quite a few ways that gay couples are hurt by being unable to marry. Now it's your turn: exactly how does gay marriage hurt the institution of civil (not religious) marriage?

[Zach]

They're probably being hurt the same way the "Protect Marriage" crowd was...except, you know, something was actually taken from them.

[John De Salvio]

How they are being hurt?
By being denied the more than 1,000 of the benefits allowed in straight marriages. A same-sex couple can live in a loving relationship for years; but if one dies and the parents of the deceased decide the surviving partner has no rights to the property of the deceased - EVEN IF A WILL STATES OTHERWISE - the parents often can overrule. That's just one hurt.

[JohnHancock1776]

We really have to think about this one instead of making a rash decision. I think we should weigh out the consequences first before moving on this. If you repeal prop 8 you will alienate the majority because the vote for prop 8 won by a majority.

[WOI]

It's quite obvious: the Prop 8 folks would be hurt by the overturn of Prop 8 because that would deprive them of their long-held "right" to hijack the institutions of California's secular government and use them to impose their small-minded worldview on the rest of society and to persecute minorities they don't like.

[Sun Lee]

This is so funny. I want my rights for disability. I want to say that my leg is broken from serving this country and want rights to disability.

What difference does this insantity has to do with homosexuals trying to get marriage rights? Don't disability rights given to those who are disabled?

If you want marriage rights, then marry straight.

[DrJJJ]

Sorry, gay marriage is an oxymoron ! Legalizing a gay marriage is a HUGE mistake! I'm for expanding your rights significantly and I don't hate gays but I ( and the majority) don't want to hear about your sexual orientation or anybody elses for that matter and you absolutely shouldn't be allowed to adopt! Ok, hit me with the hate mail!

[Ross]

As of 2007, California affords domestic partnerships most of the same rights and responsibilities as marriages under state law (Cal. Fam. Code §297.5).
Don't spread lies coco the LGBT has been beating on the CA legislature for over a decade. You can't legitimize sodomy and call it love and marriage.
Every item you listed is allowed by CA. Fam.Code 297.5 File for domestic partnership and shut up.

[gorefan]

"vote for prop 8 won by a majority. "Posted by: JohnHancock1776

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. " Thomas Jefferson

[gorefan]

" I'm for expanding your rights significantly" Posted by: DrJJJ

Ther is a term for this idea - "separate but equal".

[Zach]

Sun, I presume you don't get disability benefits because you're not disabled. Your lifestyle is not virtually the same as a disabled person. However, gay families live the same way as straight families, establishing stable relationships, raising children, etc.

It doesn't matter that you don't like to think of them as the same, and it doesn't matter that separate-but-equal civil unions exist. Such arrangements haven't held up in court and are needlessly redundant. You may not like it, DrJJJ may want his uninformed opinion of gay parenting heeded, but all citizens NEED and are GUARANTEED equal treatment under the law regardleSs of what some others LIKE or WANT.

[sethook]

Why the change in The White House thinking? Is it the polls or re-election jitters? Probably going to see a lot of about face decisions in the next two years.

[Sun Lee]

Zach, I take such extreme example to prove my case when you are shouting to get your rights. Law permits the citizens to gain rights to things that the legislature tries to permit. However, you already know how flawed our laws are and the reasons why every lawyer and lawmaker is out there trying to reinvent the wheel. If the words are simply an evolving thing, then what hope do we have if the future generation decides to change any meaning of any word that we are redefining now? What good is it to the society that we live in when we cannot keep and preserve what is correct? If you are continue to fight for change, go ahead and ask. Howver, I forewarn you that the change that you are asking for isn't the same thing that you think you are going to get. You need to broaden your perspective and understand what you are trying to achieve.

[Lee Neville]

Prop 8 won by a slight majority. All that proves is that there are just a few more morons in California than not. Gay marriage will ultimately win, just like any other repression throughout history. One by one, each state is making it legal, and it will continue (it's just embarrassing that California, which is usually a leader, is one of the hold outs). The only question is how much time and money must be wasted before gay marriage will ultimately prevail?

[Apocolypse]

Sodomy is not marriage by any means. Marriage + one man, one woman.

[Al Klymko]

Stop using the word "minority" in an incorrect way. You're just a bunch of sickos that want extra privileges.

[Zach]

Sun, citizens HAVE rights, they are not "permitted" them by a free and fair government. One such right is equal treatment under the law. THAT is what's worth preserving and and correct as one of our founding principles. It's not to be abridged because part of society simply doesn't approve of another part, or because they generally fear change. What's good and correct in society is preserved because it works, not because we're afraid to change it.

Equality for all - that's a perspective I share with our founders, and I'd say it's was quite broad. They saw flawed laws where they came from, which had government giving preference to one citizen over another, and established a system that swears off and roots out such laws. Yes, that means words change, because they are central to laws, and I'd say that hindering the alignment of our laws with our principles for the sake of a word is actually rather myopic. Laws exist to protect people, not words.

People can protect the word, though. You can tell the government to stop using it. I, and probably most of America, would be fine with that, but not with saying that some of us need to be treated differently because of it.

[IRunThis]

To Apocolypse:

And if you can tell me that (a) you never engaged in heterosexual sodomy with someone; and/or (b) you think that heterosexual couples who do also should not be permitted to marry, well that eliminates a LARGE PERCENTAGE of the heterosexual, marrying population now, doesn't it?

Logic fail, my friend.

[Jose Rodriguez]

"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of Constitutional power."
— Thomas Jefferson

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
— Thomas Jefferson

"We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate. “
— Thomas Jefferson

"The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object."
— Thomas Jefferson

"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed."
— Thomas Jefferson

Laws made by common consent must not be trampled on by individuals.
--George Washington

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.
--George Washington

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.
--James Madison

[TruthBeKnown]

Oh well gee, if O bama said ........................................

[Gal Friday]

@John Hancock RE: " If you repeal prop 8 you will alienate the majority because the vote for prop 8 won by a majority."

But it passed by only a 2% majority...and polling shows many of those voters would now vote differently, as it's now been exposed to exeryone how the dishonest "Yes on H8" campaign was primarily funded by the Mormons.

[Lc48b1]

Jose Rodriguez, you forgot to add this president too.

I believe marriage should be between and man and a woman.

Barack Obama

[Zach]

And Friday, it's worth noting that all those men Jose quoted founded a representative democracy with a complicated system of checks and balances, not a pure democracy where the majority simply tells everyone else what to do. A few narrowly-selected words cannot hide the breadth of their actions!

[jose rodriguez]

Zach says".... all those men Jose quoted founded a representative democracy with a complicated system of checks and balances, not a pure democracy where the majority simply tells everyone else what to do."

Casting a few stones are we Zach? I think it is an injustice to say that I believe that the majority "simply tells everyone else what to do",... I mean, you hardly know me.

The citations I posted point out that, while the founding fathers were aware of the possibility that the majority would overshadow the will of the minority, the founding fathers were far more concerned with establishing a government that would reflect the spirit and will of the people...through wholesome discretion ....and informed education." Nowhere in the writings of the founding fathers do we read that an individuals rights must "always" take precedent over the majority. Rather, it is the opposite that is true.

When the Constitution was first drawn up, the Bill of rights was amended to it because "some" the founding fathers were concerned that the constitution said very little regarding "individual" rights. Of the ten original rights mentioned in the bill of rights, only the 9th truly alludes to due process. And it wasn't until the 14th amendment that the due process clause and the equal protection clause received a greater elaboration than when the constitution was first written.

Does this mean that the founding fathers did not care about individual rights? Of course not. It merely demonstrates that they placed a greater emphasis on the right of the people to determine what kind of government they wished to have, notwithstanding their concerns regarding the "tyranny of the majority".

Does this mean that the people will always make the right choice? Sadly, no. We need only look at the long history of discrimination against African-Americans to see that sometimes the people will not always exercise "wholesome discretion". But the founding fathers always always felt that the people, through their representative legislatures, and the courts, could be stirred in the right direction given time and education.

As far as using a few "narrowly-selected" words; in my defense, I thought about copying and pasting the entire works of the Federalist papers and other assorted commentary on the constitution. However, I will end by stating that I was thinking exactly the same thing about some of the few citations that have been posted on this string.