Although now that I recall, I don’t think the secret ballot thread was even supposed to be about secret ballots… eh, c’est la vie.

It reminds me of the whole issue of doing away with secret ballots for union votes, but this thread has gotten off-track enough…

Yes it was on the books, and then overturned by the courts on constitutional grounds. When I’m not making terribly long posts here (meh), I’ve actually brought this up to my freinds when they don’t understand how prop 8 passed. But since I was originally responding to Hurricane when he specifically asked for text from the constitution, that is what I supplied. Then in my next post, I opined that the nature of human experience expands and allows us to understand more of what our inalienable rights actually are.

That original law was overturned, and so have many, many other ballot initiatives in California. Just because they are voted on, doesn’t make them constitutional, it only means that someone or some group got enough signatures to legally get it on the ballot. Legal review after an election is the norm. I wish it would happen before an election to avoid these post election issues.

“And yes California already offers all those BEFORE had they legalized same-sex marriage, they wouldn’t need to create all these various laws to ensure gay people are treated equally.

The point of the post was that BEFORE the vote on Prop 8, the Yes on Prop 8 crowd were initiating letter writing campaigns in an attempt to smear people and businesses that donated to the No on Prop 8 cause. Now that the vote has been done and Prop 8 passed, those same people are not getting the same treatment from the No on Prop 8 and whining about it. (I guarantee that No on Prop 8 crowds got similiar death threats before the Vote).

Kaliska,

Good questions! Yes, tax breaks, the right to be referred to as next of kin, having your state that you pay taxes too recognize you as an equal (and not seperate citizen) are wonderful things! And yes California already offers all those but had they legalized same-sex marriage, they wouldn’t need to create all these various laws to ensure gay people are treated equally. All these procautions were done to protect the religious right’s definition of marriage. But the LGBT community doesn’t care about the religious rite of marriage, only the civil right of legal marriage. We do not care what one’s holy book says about what one’s God believes to be marriage; we only care that our government treats us like everyone else, seperate by equal is still seperate.

PS – if your marriage to your man was recent, congrats!

This posts have gotten way off track though. The main point of this story was that the touchy, feely, give peace a chance hardcore lefty’s are throwing rocks and threatening those people that disagreed with them on Prop 8 (I believe that threatening violence to intimidate votes is a violation of an individual’s civil liberties, something the ACLU should be jumping on but won’t)

I can no longer claim to be the Queen of Incredibly Long & Detailed Comments.

Ed, Hmmmm, Albert, Keyboard, Darek… y’all can jello-wrestle for the Queen title.