Human Rights: Oral Arguments for California's Prop 8 Appeal Set for December 6th, in San Francisco

I just received a text message:

"From AFER: 9th Circuit just announced oral arguments for Prop 8 appeal will be on Dec. 6 @ 10am in San Francisco. Text EQUAL to 25383 to donate $10 and support the fight!"

So I did a one-second Google search, and came up with this article, from the San Francisco Examiner........

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http://www.examiner.com/sf-in-san-francisco/breaking-news-oral-arguments-for-pro...

Breaking News: Oral arguments for Prop 8 appeal set for Dec 6 in San Francisco

* October 21st, 2010 12:45 pm PT


The 9th Circuit just announced that oral arguments for the Proposition 8 appeal will be on Dec. 6 at 10 a.m. in San Francisco. Attorneys Theodore Olson and David Boies submitted their response brief with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this week. If you haven’t read it yet, check out this amazing conclusion written by Olsen:

"Last month, in a widely publicized tragedy, a young Rutgers student jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge after being outed on the Internet as gay. A few days later, across the Hudson River in the Bronx, two 17-year-old young men were beaten and tortured to the brink of death by a gang of nine because they were suspected of being gay. Incidents such as these are all too familiar to our society. And it is too plain for argument that discrimination written into our constitutional charters inexorably leads to shame, humiliation, ostracism, fear, and hostility. The consequences are all too often very, very tragic.

Proposition 8 was promoted as necessary to protect marriage and children, but its unmistakable purpose and effect is to isolate gay men and lesbians and their relationships as separate, unusual, dangerous, and unworthy of the marital relationship. By definition, such a law stigmatizes gay men and lesbians, and that kind of stigmatization leads, often indirectly, but certainly inevitably, to isolation and estrangement.

What can the Supreme Court mean when it says that our Constitution “neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,” if a majority can so stigmatize a small, visible, and vulnerable minority and in the process cause such wrenching anguish? The American promise—and dream—of equality surely means at a minimum that the government, before “drawing a line around” some segment of its citizenry and designating them unworthy of something as important and socially meaningful as the institution of marriage, must have a legitimate and factually tenable rationale for doing so. Proposition 8 fails even this most basic level of scrutiny. It advances no legitimate purpose."



Photo: David Boies (right) speaking with Ted Olsen (left)
Photo: American Foundation for Equal Rights