My first answer is that equality is both never too soon and often too late. But that's perhaps rhetoric that doesn't answer the question completely. Why did the Court rule "now" and not "later"? Because a lawsuit filed in 2003 finally made it through the system.
To clarify:
The CA Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that was appealed from the Appellate court prior.See, a few years ago (2003, to be exact), an upstart young mayor in San Francisco (Gavin "Hottie" Newsome) realized that the statutes governing his city (which, unlike other cities in CA, has a lot of autonomy in its governance) don't say anything about restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples. So ... with a gender neutral shift in the marriage license language, thousands of same-sex couples got hitched in a couple of weeks.
Fast forward to a CA Supreme Court decision that annulled all of those marriages and a subsequent lawsuit filed by some of the couple who were affected by that decision.
The case wound its way through the courts: the suit was validated in the first court, then overturned at the Appellate level and then, as we knew it would be, the suit was appealed to the CA Supreme Court which then agreed to hear the case during this session.
In March of this year and almost unprecedented 3 1/2 hour hearing was televised and broadcast online as well. Many many questions were asked and answered and the Court, after hearing all the evidence and testimony, had until June 6th to deliver the ruling.
They chose last Thursday.
We're real people in California. I'll have more to say about this in a few days, but for now, I'm still a bit in shock about the whole thing. After a lifetime of being less than, the magnitude of the ruling is beyond true comprehension.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment