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PROP H8 goes down in flames before the 9th Circuit (02/08/12)


The top 10 quotations from the 9th Circuit’s Prop 8 ruling

By Jacob Combs [PROP 8 TRIAL TRACKER]

Prop8TrialTracker.com had the opportunity last evening to sit down and thoroughly read Judge Reinhardt’s compelling ruling striking down Prop 8 as unconstitutional. (You can find the full decision here.) Below are our 10 favorite quotations, chosen for their clarity and persuasiveness, their importance to the fight for full LGBT equality and (perhaps surprisingly) their humor.

1. “Proposition 8 serves no purpose and has no effect other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.” (p.5)

2. “By using their initiative power to target a minority group and withdraw a right that it possessed, without a legitimate reason for doing so, the people of California violated the Equal Protection Clause [of the federal Constitution]. We hold Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional on this ground.” (p.79-80)

3. “Proposition 8 operates with no apparent purpose but to impose on gays and lesbians, through the public law, a majority’s private disapproval of them and their relationships, by taking away from them the official designation of ‘marriage,’ with its societally recognized status. Proposition 8 therefore violates the Equal Protection Clause.” (p.77)

4. “It will not do to say that Proposition 8 was intended only to disapprove of same-sex marriage, rather than to pass judgment of same-sex couples as people. Just as the criminalization of “homosexual conduct … is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination in both the public and private spheres,” so too does the elimination of the right to use the official designation of “marriage” for the relationships of committed same-sex couples send a message that gays and lesbians are of lesser worth as a class — indeed, that they enjoy a lesser societal status.” (p.73, internal citations omitted)

5. “By emphasizing Proposition 8′s limited effect, we do not mean to minimize the harm that this change in the law caused to same-sex couples and their families. To the contrary, we emphasize the extraordinary significance of the official designation of ‘marriage.’ That designation is important because ‘marriage’ is the name that society gives to the relationship that matters most between two adults. A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but to the couple desiring to enter into a committed lifelong relationship, a marriage by the name of ‘registered domestic partnership’ does not.” (p.37)

6. “The incidents of marriage, standing alone, do not, however, convey the same governmental and societal recognition as does the designation of ‘marriage’ itself. We do not celebrate when two people merge their bank accounts; we celebrate when a couple marries. The designation of ‘marriage’ is the status that we recognize.” (p.39)

7. “Proposition 8′s only effect, we have explained, was to withdraw from gays and lesbians the right to employ the designation of ‘marriage’ to describe their committed relationships and thus to deprive them of a societal status that afford dignity to those relationships. Proposition 8 could not have reasonably been enacted to promote childrearing by biological parents, to encourage responsible procreation, to proceed with caution in social change, to protect religious liberty, or to control the education of schoolchildren.” (p.69)

8.”It is the designation of ‘marriage’ itself that expresses validation, by the state and the community, and that serves as a symbol, like a wedding ceremony or a wedding ring, of something profoundly important.” (p.37-8)

9. “It is implausible to think that denying two men or two women the right to call themselves married could somehow bolster the stability of families headed by one man and one woman.” (p.63)

And the most colorful one of all:

10. “We need consider only the many ways in which we encounter the word ‘marriage’ in our daily lives and understand it, consciously or not, to convey a sense of significant. We are regularly given forms to complete that ask us whether we are “single” or “married.” Newspapers run announcements of births, deaths, and marriages. We are excited to see someone ask, “Will you marry me?”, whether on bended knee in a restaurant or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly it would not have the same effect to see “Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?”. Groucho Marx’s one-liner, “Marriage is a wonderful institution … but who wants to live in an institution?” would lack its punch if the word ‘marriage’ were replaced with the alternative phrase. So too with Shakespeare’s “A young man married is a man that’s marr’d,” Lincoln’s “Marriage is neither heaven nor hell, it is simply purgatory,” and Sinatra’s “A man doesn’t know what happiness is until he’s married. By then it’s too late.” We see tropes like “marrying for love” versus “marrying for money” played out again and again in our films and literature because of the recognized important and permanence of the marriage relationship. Had Marilyn Moneroe’s film been called How to Register a Domestic Partnership with a Millionaire, it would not have conveyed the same meaning as did her famous movie, even though the underlying drama for same-sex couples is no different. The name ‘marriage’ signifies the unique recognition that society gives to harmonious, loyal, enduring, and intimate relationships.” (p.38-9)

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