Word: california
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...marriage supporters who want to restore California's place at the head of a growing number of states welcoming same-sex marriages are going to have to do it the hard way: by persuading the same neighbors who voted to ban such marriages last fall to change their minds. They aren't going to get any help from the state's supreme court, never mind that Chief Justice Ronald George's historic opinion last May ruled that any discrimination against gays is no less outrageous - and illegal - than discrimination based on race or religion. Despite the sweep of that ruling...
...sense, petitioners' and the Attorney General's complaint is that it is just too easy to amend the California Constitution through the initiative process," wrote George for the 6-1 majority. "But it is not a proper function of this court to curtail that process; we are constitutionally bound to uphold it." Translation: Until Californians themselves change their system for amending the constitution, it will be the people - not the courts - who have final say on even the most fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. (See pictures of the gay-rights movement, from Stonewall to Prop...
...courts for now, it has placed the issue squarely back on the political front burner. Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, a 700,000-member political movement, said efforts to put the issue back before voters as soon as 2010 have already begun. "The initiative process in California is flawed," Jacobs tells TIME. "The very idea that a majority can vote to take rights away from a minority is flawed. It really is quite outrageous...
...ballot initiative will put California back into the gay-marriage fight, which has considerably broadened in the months since Prop. 8 passed. States like Vermont and Maine have embraced gay marriage, and New York is among others that may do so soon. And in a telling bit of irony, Moreno began his dissent by quoting not from his own court's historic 2008 opinion, but from one issued earlier this year in Iowa. "The 'absolute equality of all' persons before the law [is] 'the very foundation principle of our government,'" he wrote...
Jacobs tells TIME he still sees California as the epicenter of these fights. Obama will get a taste of the passions running deep in the Golden State as soon as Wednesday night, when he appears at the Beverly Hills Hilton in Los Angeles for a fundraiser. Lieutenant Dan Choi, an Arabic-speaking Iraq War veteran who is the first soldier to be dismissed from the Army under Obama, will be standing outside with Jacobs and others to urge the President to take action. "So much is coming from California right now," says Jacobs. "Don't Ask Don't Tell...