How so?

Sounds like a reasonable day for California.

This decision refers to the California Constitution and a large number of prior cases; it's not one that can be extended to the US Constitution and it's about as far from "legislating from the bench" as one can get, with 6 of 7 Republican-appointed judges agreeing on the verdict.

It's good to see the conservative attempts to create a nanny state fall short.

Go West!
Life is peaceful there!

uh. I got nothing else.

Children usually get a mommy and a daddy to start with. Most families aren't single moms and single dads. A balance of genders is the natural way to do things. If a child is really taken with a dad-dad/mom-mom couple, realize what they're getting into and provide their consent, fine. Otherwise, it should by mom-dad couples only.

That's irrelevant. Your gay couple may turn out to be sh*tty just as likely as a straight couple. Thats where the filtering process at adoption agency comes in.

Are you gay? Over all of your years on this forum, I think it never came up before.

Woo! Just in time for the election... again *sigh*

Don't get me wrong this is overwhelmingly a good thing. The timing couldn't be much worse with the general election around the corner.

If gay marriage doesn't sit well with you, I wish you'd change your mind but its fine if you don't. I just hope that you don't make it a litmus test as we have a lot of other serious issues to fix in the next few presidential terms.

I wouldn't worry too much about the impact on the elections right now. A lot of crazier stuff can (and will) happen till November.

Edit: went to foxnews.com to see what their newsdroids have to say. On the frontpage -- a big picture of the polygamist sect compound and some in-depth coverage (by the way -- technically, aren't those polygamists Christians?). The Calif gay marriage ban uplifting news is one of the links down the bottom, and coverage is pretty restrained.

It's a glorious day for California.

Not only because of the marriage equality ruling, which is way overdue. (Legislature, being the proper channel for this, has already voted to legalize same-sex marriage, but was being halted by the silly proposition, which the supreme court struck down.)

But also, because the court settled that sexual orientation deserves equal protection, on the level of race or religion, thus shielding gays from casual discrimination. Also completely overdue.

Will it make the election year more interesting? Probably. At the same time, if Republicans start trying to frighten people with same-sex marriage again, it's going to feel like a desparate attempt at distraction, at a time when they should be explaining how they're going to fix the horrible economy, huge price increases, and the unending non-war in Iraq.

Unfortunately, for many people it isn't a non-issue. But I do think that words similar to those could work. I would just change "non-issue" to "narrowly focused wedge issue". Otherwise, you risk offending both sides. I'm sure gays, and those who think equal protections is common sense, would not call it a non-issue.

I am very much in agreement with the decision of the court. I disagree with the notion that marriage is something that needs to be "protected" from same-sex unions. I have absolutely no problem with same-sex adoption and don't believe such couples would, on average across the entire population, be "worse" parents than straight couples adopting.

I get twitchy, however, when people start using the word "right". If we're talking the right of a US Citizen, the way that voting is a citizen's right, then OK, I'm on board.

However, I see Wil Wheaton post on Twitter using a phrase like "basic human rights" and I groan. The right to be a romantic couple with whomever you want is a human right. A government-issued marriage license piece of paper is not a "basic human right" for couples of any orientation. I guess it's a good thing that we in western countries can take our "basic human rights" so for granted that we lack perspective on what "basic" really means.

I imagine, though, that most people are referring to the rights of citizens when discussing such things, so I'm probably only taking exception to Wheaton.

I wonder how the "states rights" folks in the unreconstructed South will take this. My guess is that "states rights" only count when you're trying to keep black folks from voting.

At least you didn't go the incest route. That would have been too easy.

That's because you're a Northeastern, yankee, educated, latte-drinking, volvo-driving elitist. Stop thinking you're better than we are!

Can we please just stop legislating about who gets to f*ck who? Aren't there more important matters at hand?