I’m no legal expert, so I’ll be relying on a number of sources to keep myself up-to-date as our equality goes on trial.
Here’s a bare-bones explanation of what’s going on.
This is a great in-depth article from The New Yorker on how the trial came to happen. It also has some terrific material I’ve never seen in public debate. For example, when people ask where the right to marry is mentioned in the Constitution, point out you also won’t find the right to bear children or the right to travel from state to state. And then ask if they believe those aren’t real rights, either.
The first few days (at least) of the trial won’t be televised, so here’s a terrific live-blogging effort from the Courage Campaign. I’ll warn you, though, it’s addictive (and unapologetically anti-Prop 8).
The San Jose Mercury News has a less detailed, less partisan live blog.
If you haven’t read attorney Ted Olson’s opening argument against Prop 8, then you should. Right now. It explains the legal strategy, and is simply lovely to read.
Speaking of Ted Olson, this is the website of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the group trying to help us win equality.
And I’ll be going to Karen Ocamb for on-going legal analysis of the proceedings.
Does anyone know of someone on the other side doing a thorough live blog of the proceedings? I’d love to see how it looks to them, but ProtectMarriage.com and the Alliance Defense Fund don’t have much to offer.
That’s it for now. I’ll keep posting valuable links as I find them. Suggestions are appreciated.
Hi, I am a fan of your work and think you are a brilliant man. I wonder what your thoughts are on the following. I don’t think anyone should have to change who they are, but essentially do you think that the LGBT community should change their public relations stance in order to maybe benefit the marriage equality debate?
That may have been a bit confusing. Ok, President Obama did an amazing job getting the votes of younger americans because of his campaign. It wasn’t so much his political stance but more of how he advertised himself. Yes, there will always be those who hate the notion of gay marriage and disagree but do you think if we, in essence, “advertised” ourselves differently then we might get somewhere?
Thanks
Thanks, Jordan. I do believe we have to advertise ourselves a bit differently than we’ve been doing — but I don’t mean that in the way that a lot of people do (that gay men have to try harder to be “straight-acting). My misgivings have to do with our side’s frequent use of the “H8″ and “bigotry” to characterize people opposed to same-sex marriage. I think it’s an accurate description of our opposition’s leadership, but not necessarily of the average person who doesn’t spend much time thinking about the issue. I want to write about this more in the future.
Hey I love the blog-here is something I’ve gotten out of the anti-equality proponents
A) Marriage is good. Good job. There is no intrinsic trade-off between gay and straight marriage. If you are so impressionistic as to allow x marriage to affect yours, it seems like there are an infinite number of marriages in the status quo that do not constitute what you deem marriage, so it should have already been destroyed. If marriage is about child-bearing, then do we not allow infertile couples to marry? If it is about biological children, then should we ban adoption? Seriously-even if the anti’s win 100% that kids are best when raised by their “real” parents(yes I know that is statistical manipulation-its about divorce rates), those kids are ALREADY up for adoption-its not like in world A they live with their biolgoical parents and in world b they get stolen by gay parents. Not being with their “true” parents is inevitable and an inherent part of ADOPTION. I guess here is the other thing that makes no sense-any reason why marriage is good which is not true of gay marriage(child bearing, etc.) are still good post-gay marriage. Each individual person makes a decision about what marriage is to them, and they make individual choices-nobody would think, oh, marriage doesn’t have any meaning anymore cause gays can marry, let’s go crazy. There are bad marriages in the status quo. Guess what-people still want to have children even if gays marry. I know, its so tough to believe. I read on “protectmarriage.org” that gays are more infedelite-even if this is true, and i doubt this greatly, so? How do gays being infedelite affect straight relationships? The spillover necessary would go as follows-gays have multiple lovers so I’ll go cheat on my wife. I guess the anti answer to this is that it would be more subtle, i.e. marriage is “devalued”. That doesn’t make sense because it is being devalued in the status quo for multiple other reasons. The spillover arguments are horrible.
@Jordan
I can see what you’re saying and it’s a fair point, however I would say that it’s far easier for Obama to “advertise” himself as he is only one man, however for gay people as a whole unit to advertise themselves differently would be almost impossible seeing as, just like in any other group of people, everyone has unique behavior and attitude.