On Tuesday, February 7, the U.S. Ninth Circuit appeals court ruled that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. The Proposition, passed on November of 2008, banned gay marriage and, in doing so, took away the civil liberties of countless Americans. Rather than protect the sanctity of marriage, the law was deemed a means to discriminate a “politically unpopular and vulnerable minority.”
“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” said Judge Stephen Reinhardt in the majority opinion.”
“Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker concluded the nation’s first federal court trial on same-sex marriage by ruling in August 2010 that gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry their chosen partner, and that Prop. 8 discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation and gender.”
More from the San Francisco Chronicle
- Wise Ruling Against Prop. 8
Editorial, February 8, 2012
- Â Shaky Grounds for Prop. 8 Ruling
Debra J. Saunders, February 8, 2012
