Friday, September 30, 2005



Gay marriage vetoed in California

Governor Schwarzenegger has vetoed the gay marriage bill recently passed by the California legislature. The bill would have amended the California Family Code to define marriages conducted by the state as a "civil contract between two persons" (rather than the present "a man and a woman") - allowing the state to issue marriage licenses regardless of gender. Schwarzenegger's veto means that that won't happen; while the bill had comfortable majorities in both the house and Senate, it did not have the two-thirds majority required to overturn a veto.

Schwarzenegger claimed that the bill was contrary to a previous proposition and was therefore unconstitutional, but this is simply specious. Proposition 22 forbade the recognition of same-sex marriages contracted outside of California; it did not prohibit California from licensing such marriages itself. Instead, Schwarzenegger is just pandering to bigotry, and trying to hide behind shoddy legal reasoning to do it. Hopefully that will be punished by the voters of California at the ballot box next November.

2 comments:

Frankly you are being specious to suggest that Californians are prepared to support same-sex marriage when they weren't even prepared to acknowledge same-sex marriages contracted in another state.

The only shoddy legal reasoning here is yours.

Posted by Muerk : 9/30/2005 10:03:00 PM

"Family" used to be such a nice word before the fundies got stuck into it...

CY

Posted by Anonymous : 10/01/2005 10:30:00 AM