Dear Friend and Reader,
After spending most of the day taking furious notes and listening to attorneys hash out the biggest civil rights issue of my generation — the rights of GLBT citizens of this country — I want to reflect, but am just too wrecked to process it all right now. So instead, I’ll provide a rundown of what transpired today, to the best of my ability, and will save the analysis for another day.
There were five people who presented their positions in court today: Shannon Minter, the head attorney in favor of marriage equality; Ray Marshall, a friend of the court, former state bar president and representation for many civil rights groups (NAACP, Asian Pacific American Legal Center, et al.); Mike Morocco, representing a private couple; Terry Stewart, representing the city and county of San Francisco; Chris Kreuger, representing Attorney General Jerry Brown; and Ken Starr, representing supporters of Proposition 8.
While I presumed that today’s primary argument would be regarding amendment and revision: whether Proposition 8 was serious enough that it should have gone through the courts, there was much more discussion around what the spirit of California’s constitution is really about, what direction previous state supreme court justices leaned towards in their decisions about constitutional changes, and whether that direction should be followed.
As Jenny Pizer of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund described during today’s teleconference:
The SupremeВ Court’s decision will tell us something about the initiative process that we did not know before…We’re plowing some fresh fields…[questioning] the basic constitutional principles: what is the constitution for, what does balanced government mean? [Today’s arguments were] creative and persuasive because it’s a new area.