Finally – Prop 8 Goes on Trial

The following is a guest post by Holly McCarthy:

Well, it seems the time we have all awaited so anxiously is upon us. California's high court will hear both sides of the gay marriage argument starting Thursday. It is hard to believe the decision was made a year ago to deny gay and lesbian couples the right to marry. And what a long damn year it's been!

It is incredible how many groups have stood up to file friend-of-the-court (what a great term!) briefs including: NAACP, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the National Organization for Women. Prop 8 is interesting to so many because it is a completely arbitrary and bigoted response to the differences of others.

By curtailing the rights of gays and lesbians, hate groups think they will get the upper hand. It seems all they have done is gain the ire of every minority group in the entire country.

More than 18,000 couples who married since California made it legal for same-sex couples to do as such. That is a staggering number of people being told they do not have the same rights as other human beings. Prop 8 is despicable on so many levels. Not the least of which is that is makes the LGBT community feel as though they are “less.” Well, no more.

According to an Associated Press news brief: “In a rare departure, the state's own top lawyer, Attorney General Jerry Brown, has refused to defend the initiative and is urging the justices to invalidate it. Brown says Proposition 8 itself is unconstitutional because the Supreme Court's 4-3 decision last year recognized gays as a minority group entitled to judicial protection and established marriage as a fundamental right.”

So, Jerry Brown gets it, which is good to know. Since it passed, one question has been on the minds of all who could not believe it ever saw daylight: “Would it pass again?”

The answer most people agree on is “No.” People were lied to by all the hate groups lobbying so hard to get the bill passed and they fell prey to the idiocy. The voters are definitely complicit when it comes to the passage of Prop 8 but they were not alone in pushing it through. Church groups and other anti-gay groups spent millions on getting this thing passed. The grassroots efforts of the opposition never stood a chance.

Stand tall this week as you always do and do what you can if you are in California and anywhere near Sacramento. While Ken Starr and his clan press on to keep this ridiculous farce in effect, it would seem the state will be very reticent to void 18,000 marriages it deemed perfectly legal just one year ago. We can only hope the rest of us will be that lucky.

This post was contributed by Holly McCarthy, who writes on the subject of the best online colleges. She invites your feedback at hollymccarthy12@gmail.com