From its Mission Street office above a print shop, the Equality Federation takes a global view of the Proposition 8 case now being considered by Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker.
Whatever Walker’s decision in the case to throw out the 2008 voter-approved ballot measure that outlaws same-sex marriage (one designed to overturn a California Supreme Court ruling six months earlier upholding that right), it will be appealed and could end up in the Supreme Court. That’s the outcome that most concerns some gay rights’ advocates.
“Are we at the tipping point where we can win this case in the Supreme Court?” asked Toni Broaddus, the executive director of the Equality Federation. “When you’re in the middle of history it’s hard to tell where the tipping point is.”
The Mission-based network of more than 60 state-based LGBT advocacy groups across 45 states has tried to “create a critical mass” of uniform state laws and protections, Broaddus said.
A Supreme Court decision on gay marriage could affect those protections, and early on the Equality Federation was one of the LGBT groups that felt it might be too soon to let the courts decide the issue, Broaddus said.
“We had worked in alliances on a state-by-state basis to lay the groundwork, and many of us have felt like we don’t have the court (Supreme Court) yet,” she said of their feelings when the case was first filed.
“I still have concerns,” she said. “But I would be really shocked if we lost at this level.”
One of the arguments against challenging Prop. 8 in the courts was that the Supreme Court prefers not to get ahead of public opinion. Based on its 5-4 January ruling that prevented Judge Walker from allowing television cameras in the courtroom, the court’s view on the challenges to Prop. 8 could be interpreted as unsympathetic.
In his New York Times Sunday column, Frank Rich wrote that one of the reasons the Supreme Court voted against television cameras was “to shield viewers from the sympathetic gay plaintiffs — ordinary tax-paying Americans whose families, including four children, were often in the courtroom.”
Justice Anthony Kennedy, often the swing vote in civil rights cases, voted with the 5-4 majority in that decision.
Another sobering fact for LGBT advocacy groups: Gay marriage has yet to win a popular vote, and the four states that allow same-sex marriage — Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont — have done so through their state legislatures. (The Wall Street Journal’s interactive map on gay marriage rights across the country is here.)
Broaddus called the 2008 victory of Prop. 8 a “pretty hard lesson in democracy” that left the LGBT community “shell-shocked.” The up side, she said, was that it increased grassroots activism. But fighting against voter referendums has been difficult.
Activists lost the battle to defeat a voter repeal in November of a same-sex marriage law approved by Maine’s legislature. She said she did not see a “rush to the ballot box” for this November, and her member organizations are focusing on electing sympathetic public officials — and watching the Prop 8 case closely.
people need to be reminded that there will be NO language found in the US Constitution that will support disdcrimination of any kind; it’s quite material that all the states with these temporary bans in place, got them there by editing the constitution itself.
There will be no such edits to the US Constitution until a 2/3 majority can be found to make that happen.
Unfortunately for the Dark Side, that 2/3 they’d need…don’t actually exist in the American Population anymore; it’s 50/50 at best…
It is JUST as logical that the USSC will take one look and say “State’s rights issue” with the stipulation that whatever the state comes up with, it will HAVE to be “equal” and it will have to comply with equal treatment under the Law…as written…
“Equality and justice for all” may very well be as far as this issue gets to go.
With the loss of this battle, The h8ters have already lost the war…
But America has won it.
I share some of the apprehension expressed here, but, it’s quite possible that SCOTUS’ refusal to allow cameras in Walker’s courtroom – a first – had nothing to do with Prop. 8, but rather was just a decision on cameras in court. Further, regardless Walker’s decision, it’s probable that the loser will appeal, but there’s no assurance that the full 9th Circuit will agree to hear the case, nor that SCOTUS will, taking it one step further. If Walker strikes down Prop. 8, which seems likely to me, that may be as far as the matter goes.