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UPDATE: A few more thoughts on the hearings:From 365gay.com
Advocate.com interviews Geoff Kors from Equality California, and Brad Sears, executive director of the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
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There's been many discussions about yesterday's Supreme Court Prop 8 hearing, but not a lot of in depth analysis. Unfortunately, those that have sprung up are rather discouraging.
Check out Bob Egelko article at the SF Gate: Justices seem to be leaning in favor of Prop 8
Here's Pete Williams from MSNBC: Court appears ready to uphold Prop. 8.
But be encouraged. Not everyone agrees with these analysis, and one can never predict what the court will decide. In May, not only did they say gays and lesbians had the right to marry, they proclaimed the LGBT community a suspect class due to years of harassment and discrimination, granting us all protections guaranteed by the Constitution (which was argued in yesterday's hearing that this alone should overthrow Prop 8), a decision which was more than we were expecting and were gratefully surprised.
There's a strong chance we'll be surprised again!
The movement is going forward whether or not Prop 8 is overturned. Win or lose, we still have a long way to go for equal rights, and we're not about to stop. Change is coming. Don't give up hope.
I'm not discouraged. The pieces I've seen so far, perhaps because there's been little time to analyze or perhaps because their authors were lazy, all quote Kennard extensively.
ReplyDeleteWell she barely shut her mouth during the entire 3 hours, and she's clearly "switched sides" and will now all but certainly vote to uphold Prop 8.
But just because she took up all the time and air in the room does not mean she decides the case alone. Chief Justice George spoke second-most-often and also appears to support Prop 8.
But the comments by the other 5 Justices seemed to lean the other way. And their comments in the aggregate took up less time than any 1 of the 30 or so rambling quasi-questions by the bizarre Joyce Kennard.
She was emminently quotable. She was, in fact, a one-person freak show the press would find hard to resist covering.
But let's wait for a more serious analysis that takes into account the less obvious comments by the less loquacious Justices.