D-Day is Tuesday, May 26.

May 22, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Finally, the California Supremes announced today that their Proposition 8 decision will come down Tuesday, May 26 at 10:00 a.m. At that time, this is your link to the decision: www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/.

This has been like “waiting for the other shoe to drop” since November 4.

Tuesday night, there will be public demonstrations (celebrating or mourning or riot or …?) in many cities in California. This comes close to, but not directly on the 30^th anniversary of the White Night Riots in San Francisco.

So now we know the state-wide rally, Meet in the Middle, will occur on Saturday, May 30 (gathering at 1:00 p.m. at Fresno’s City Hall), rather than on this Memorial Day weekend.

Depending on the outcome of the Court’s decision, of course, wheels will begin to turn about our recourse as a community. Most responsible commentators foresee two major outcomes:

First, that the 18,000 + same-sex marriages contracted between June 17 and November 4 last year will be held to be legally valid. My marriage and its legal protections and obligations, is one of those 18,000.

Second, that Proposition 8, which California voters approved on the November ballot 52 to 48 percent, will also be held to be legally valid, thus foreclosing on any further same-sex marriages for now. As with the original federal Prohibition amendment, we know that marriage prohibition cannot last.

There are a limited number of weeks for Equality California, Love Honor Cherish and others to make their final decision whether to attempt to overturn Proposition 8 on the 2010 or 2012 ballot. The way things have been going elsewhere in the country, 2010 seems the most likely, because there is momentum right now over the marriage issue.

But all of us are waiting for an unknown number of other points which may be part of the Supreme Court’s decision ~ whether for example, it makes any comments about California’s domestic partnership as being equivalent to civil marriage in all aspects but name; or whether it speaks to the issue of separating the authority to officiate at civil marriages from religious ones, and thereby stripping the right of clergy to sign civil marriage licenses.

In effect, the commentators who think they can “call” this decision in advance may only be chipping at the tip of an iceberg. We know that Proposition 8 attempts to give the voters veto-power of basic matters of equal protection before the law, etc. It is possible that if the Court has found, as was voiced during the oral arguments March 6, that the people do indeed have the right to make very bad decisions about civil rights, it may also speak in such a way to lift up, protect, equalize or prod the voters and legislators to protect our inalienable rights.

Both camps in the marriage battles know that Tuesday’s decision will not end the war once and for all, not even in California. We will continue to build momentum, and our opponents will continue to build resistance. Can we sustain the momentum that the 2008 favorable court decision, the Iowa court decision, and the recent actions in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire set in motion? Or can the religious right’s resistance, which raised vats full of cash to push Proposition 8 last summer, be multiplied over and over, and again? Can they by sheer force of moralizing will reverse the decisions of lawmakers and courts in six other states?

Or— if the outcome of Tuesday’s California decision sets other actions in motion or charts a course for redress of the standing injustice against LGBT people—will the resistance begin to crumble? Remember, the marriage battles are only one, high visibility part of the religious right’s resistance to LGBT rights: they don’t want us to have rights in housing, in the military, in employment, in adoptions or protection from hate crimes.

Pray, my friends. And if you want to connect with more of the groups working on these issues, check the Links at No on 8 Church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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