Enough agonizing, Mr. President

Civil unions, while a vast improvement over the absence of any recognition of same-sex relationships, are almost by definition second-class arrangements. The temptation is to think that Obama knows this, and that his reluctance to endorse marriage equality is more political than personal. When he ran for the presidency in 2008, it was the conventional wisdom that supporting gay marriage would be ...

LA Times • Dec 31, 2010

Obama: "Prepared to Implement"

On the question of marriage equality, the president said his "attitudes are evolving." "Like a lot of people, I'm wrestling with this," he said. "I've wrestled with the fact that marriage traditionally has had a different connotation. But I also have a lot of very close friends who are married gay or lesbian couples." The president also signaled that he and his lawyers are reviewing "a range of ...

Advocate • Dec 23, 2010

New Warning Shots Fired for Gay Marriage: This Week in Prop 8 for December 20, 2010

As the Prop 8 case continues to percolate behind closed doors at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, activists aren't content to wait. First, there was an excellent explanation this week of "The Best Argument Against Gay Marriage -- and why it fails." The short version is that the anti-gay side is...

Stop8.org • Dec 20, 2010

One Battle Won, Activists Shift Sights

As gay people around the country reveled on Sunday in the historic Senate vote to repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," a liberal media watchdog group said it planned to announce on Monday that it was setting up a "communications war room for gay equality" in an effort to win the movement's next and biggest battle: for a right to same-sex marriage. The new group, Equality Matters, grew out of Media Ma...

NY Times • Dec 20, 2010

David Boies Takes On Stephen Colbert

David Boies, the legendary litigator and founder of Boies, Schiller & Flexner, appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report Wednesday night to talk with host Stephen Colbert about the challenge to California's Proposition 8 law prohibiting same-sex marriage. Last year Boies and conservative legal scholar Theodore Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher joined forces to fight the Prop 8 gay-marriage b...

Am Law Daily • Dec 17, 2010

A Viewer's Guide to the Ninth Circuit Oral Argument in the Proposition 8 Case

If the court simply dismisses the appeal, then presumably the district court order goes into effect, and same-sex couples can once again marry in California. But alternatively, a finding that no one has standing to defend Prop. 8 on appeal could be read to entail that no one had standing to defend it at trial--in which case the appeals court might have to vacate the entire opinion by the district ...

FindLaw • Dec 14, 2010

The Best Argument Against Gay Marriage -- And why it fails.

We all know that the common-procreation argument declares war on all same-sex marriages. But it is worth reviewing just how demeaning it is to opposite-sex couples who do not produce their own offspring. They are like losing baseball teams. They are not the real parents of their children. True, their status is not directly on the line in the gay marriage debate--George and his co-authors are not c...

Slate • Dec 14, 2010

Wild & Crazy Court and Good News from Maryland: This Week in Prop 8 for December 13, 2010

How crazy was last week? SUPER CRAZY. It started with oral arguments on Monday in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the legal challenge to Prop 8. Those two-hour arguments were as ...

Stop8.org • Dec 14, 2010

With Democratic gains in state Senate, Maryland poised to approve same-sex marriage

A majority of senators on a key committee in Maryland now favor legalizing same-sex marriage, making it increasingly likely that the state will join five others and the District in allowing such unions....

Washington Post • Dec 12, 2010

Judges hint at Prop 8 case twists and turns

And has the 9th Circuit perhaps hinted that it plans to uphold Walker's decision but in a way that would limit the case's impact to California, the only state that ever let gays get married and then later took that right away from them? The court spent a fair amount of time discussing a 1996 case from Colorado in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a state constitutional amendment that depriv...

PinkPaper • Dec 9, 2010

On the Prop. 8 Arguments and the Cameras-in-the-Court Debate

In our minds, the parade of potential horribles that Supreme Court justices and others trot out whenever the cameras-in-the-court issue gets raised failed to materialize. The judges didn't grandstand (or at least didn't grandstand any more than they typically do). The lawyers didn't ham it up. Rather, on Monday, the American people got to take a look at what they pay for....

Wall Street Journal • Dec 9, 2010

David Boies Says Antonin Scalia Could Vote Against Gay Marriage Ban

"We've always believed from the beginning this was not a conservative or liberal, Republican or Democratic issue. This was an issue of constitutional rights," Boies said. "And conservatives, at least as much as liberals, want to keep the government out of people's private lives. So, I think that this is something that we could win - no one ever likes to predict you're going to win 9-0 - but we cou...

On Top Magazine • Dec 9, 2010

Proposition 8: Will the judges go for it or punt?

Judges love the punt-it's one of their most treasured tools. (Calling penalties would be another.) Which means the opportunity to send this case through a different court might be too tempting for these 9th Circuit judges to resist. Specifically, the judges could ask the California Supreme Court to look at the question of whether or not private citizens groups and/or a county-level official has th...

KALW • Dec 9, 2010

The Proposition 8 Argument in the 9th Circuit on December 6

The court gave no indication at the conclusion of the argument about when they would rule, but it was widely expected that the decision would come relatively quickly, since a stay is in effect and if the court finds a constitutional violation, then every day the stay continues works an irreparable injury - a deprivation of constitutional rights. Also, if, as seems possible, the court finds that th...

Leonard Link • Dec 8, 2010

The Prop. 8 show

During the trial, the initiative was defended by its supporters. But at the appellate level, the parties involved usually have to show that they would be directly affected by the original ruling. Because Walker found that same-sex marriages do not harm heterosexual marriages, the supporters of the ban face significant obstacles to their argument that they are directly affected. A more recent twist...

LA Times • Dec 7, 2010

Appeals court hints at narrow Prop. 8 ruling

Lawyers challenging the 2008 initiative urged the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to uphold a federal judge's ruling in August that Prop. 8 violated the U.S. Constitution because its definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman discriminated on the basis of gender and sexual orientation. But in a nationally televised, 2 1/2-hour hearing, the three-judge appellate ...

SF Gate • Dec 7, 2010

Flash 9th Circuit Hearing Analysis: Standing, Romer, and the Word

In the questioning of David Boies, Judge Smith (the lone Republican appointee on the panel), asked him whether the failure to defend Prop 8 was a "nullification" of the efforts of the proponents and the choice of the voters in a way that was akin to a "veto" by the elected state leaders. Of course, a veto of an initiative is not allowed under the Constitution. So, conflict? (Here's where I'm heari...

Prop 8 Trial Tracker • Dec 7, 2010

Slugfest on gay marriage (and standing) in 9th Circuit

Most significant to the standing point, which was argued first, Judge Reinhardt strongly suggested that he was inclined to certify a question to the California Supreme Court to help resolve whether the proponents of Prop 8 had standing to appeal Judge Walker's order. That means that the Ninth Circuit will suspend its consideration of the issues until the California Supreme Court answers the quest...

Hunter for Justice • Dec 7, 2010

Tons of Cliffhangers: This Week in Prop 8 for December 6, 2010

It's showtime! Monday's the day for oral arguments in the next phase of Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, the legal challenge to Prop 8 that may one day reach the Supreme Court of the United States. The arguments will be heard by three randomly-picked judges: ...

Stop8.org • Dec 6, 2010

Geoff Kors leaving EQCA

Two years after leading the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, Geoff Kors is leaving the statewide LGBT advocacy group Equality California. Kors, who has been EQCA's only executive director since the reorganization of the California Alliance for Pride and Equality in 1998, announced this morning (Friday, December 3) that he's resigning from the g...

Bay Area Reporter • Dec 5, 2010

Judge refuses to step aside in Prop. 8 case

Another ethics expert, Monroe Freedman of UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said Reinhardt's participation would probably hurt the court's credibility among people who are already suspicious of most government actions. But he said Reinhardt is on solid legal ground. After a period of confusion about ethical standards for husbands and wives in legal professions, "the law has come to...

SF Gate • Dec 5, 2010

Gay Marriage and the Law

As for Monday's proceedings, the outcome looks likely to be favorable to Prop. 8's opponents. Earlier this week the 9th Circuit announced that Judges Michael Hawkins, Stephen Reinhardt, and N. Randy Smith will hear the appeal. Hawkins and Reinhardt are both widely known as judicial liberals. Indeed, National Review's Ed Whelan promptly denounced Reinhardt as arguably "the most aggressive liberal j...

Reason • Dec 5, 2010

Reinhardt Refuses to Recuse Himself in Prop 8 Case

Here, for reasons that I shall provide in a memorandum to be filed in due course, I am certain that "a reasonable person with knowledge of all the facts would [not] conclude that [my] impartiality might reasonably be questioned." United States v. Nelson, 718 F.2d 315, 321 (9th Cir. 1983); see also Sao Paulo State of the Federated Republic of Brazil v. Am. Tobacco Co., 535 U.S. 229, 233 (2002) (per...

LGBT POV • Dec 3, 2010

Kamala Harris- California Cannot Afford Prop 8 Appeal

Kamala Harris has made it clear- the state of California cannot afford to appeal the Prop 8 decision and that means that she will "not defend Proposition 8 because it is simply unconstitutional." Harris is the newly elected attorney general of California, and her position mirrors that of current attorney general and governor-elect Jerry Brown. This leaves the defense of Prop 8 in the hands of thos...

Lez Get Real • Dec 2, 2010

NOM Demands Recusal Of Prop 8 Judge

NOM is demanding that Ninth Circuit Court Judge Stephen Reinhardt recuse himself from the three-judge panel set to hear the appeal of Prop 8's overturn on Monday. NOM's objection arises from a National Review article posted yesterday which points out that Reinhardt's wife is the executive director of the Southern California chapter of the ACLU, that she made personal contributions to the No On 8...

Joe My God • Dec 2, 2010