One of the tough things about being in a targeted (discriminated-against) group is that when law after law takes away your rights or ignores you completely, you get used to disappointment. I wasn't particularly looking forward to the Proposition 8 court decision being handed down today. After the nervous months leading up to the Prop 8 vote in California in 2008, then the months of disappointment when it passed and took away the right of same-sex couples to marry, and then the long, five-month trial and deliberation period when Prop 8 was being challenged, I didn't know what to expect.
I was honestly surprised to hear today that the federal judge hearing the case declared Prop 8 unconstitutional, saying that it violated both the equal protection and due process rights clauses. Combined with the ruling from a Massachusetts judge in July that said that the federal DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act = defines marriage as one penis + one vagina) is unconstitutional, it looks like queer folks' rights are actually on an upswing right now.
No doubt the Prop 8 case will go all the way to the Supreme Court soon, and will have a lengthy deliberation there as well, but the facts and reason have been clearly laid out in this case. (The pro-equality lawyers successfully argued that there is no "rational basis" for preventing same sex couples to marry; see the whole decision here.) We can only hope that love triumphs over hate once again and freedom and equality get a little bit closer to actually being the law of the land.
