Here’s an article from the LA Times on the opponents of the California supreme court decision, who plan to act in November when they cast their ballots in a statewide referendum, to either negate or sustain the courts decision. Sometimes these people say the funniest things:
”We are silent today,” said Strode, 71, head of a group called Bakersfield Citizens Opposed to Obscenity and Lewdness, “but we’re just biding our time. “We’ll have our say in November.”
Instead, Strode spent the day sending an e-mail alert to more than 300 pastors in the Bakersfield area, asking them to support a proposed ordinance banning gay marriage in Kern County.
“Let the people of Bakersfield see the disgusting results of them getting married. Men kissing men. Ewwww,” she said. “Then everyone will make up their minds on what they want to do about it.”
With the legalization of gay marriage in California, and the thousands of weddings, parties, and ceremonies yet to come, there exists a new dilemma in the area of religious rights versus civil rights. Can religious beliefs be invoked as a cause of discrimination? Throughout the U.S. there have been several cases in which the answer, according to the courts, is “No.”
As an article on NPR calls it, it is an emerging “culture clash” of the growing generation of younger, more tolerant (or indifferent) liberals, and the traditional conservative population. In the LA Times op-ed piece, “Will gay rights trample religious freedom?” Marc D. Stern, he lists recent court decisions that have sided with civil rights, over the increasingly marginalized religion-based discrimination the state has encountered:
“*A San Diego County fertility doctor was sued for refusing to perform artificial insemination for one partner of a lesbian couple for religious reasons. The doctor referred the patient to a colleague, promised there would be no extra cost and offered to care for her during her subsequent pregnancy. The case is now before the California Supreme Court, and justices seemed hostile to the doctor’s defense during oral arguments last month.
* Catholic Charities in Boston and San Francisco ended adoption services altogether rather than be compelled by anti-discrimination laws to place children with same-sex couples. In the Boston case, Catholic Charities was prepared to refer same-sex couples seeking to adopt to other providers, but that was not sufficient. Continue reading ‘The clash of “religious freedom” and “civil rights”’
To many, it was the next inevitable step in civil rights progress:
“This is the last frontier,” said gay Los Angeles Councilman Bill Rosendahl, who attended the wedding. “Women got the right to vote, black people got the right to vote, now gay people can get married.”
While to a handful of protestors, it was the worst thing since Brokeback Mountain:
Outside City Hall, about 1,000 people waited for the couple to emerge. Some cheered, others booed. One man waved a sign that said “Homo Sex Is a Threat to National Security.”
Congratulations to the newlyweds and those who have waited too long for their day, including Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, whom we posted about earlier. They were first in line in San Francisco to be married, after more than half a century together.
Excerpts and images taken from “Gay marriages begin as California ruling takes effect” at Latimes.com
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