Looks like all the pressure on El Coyote has paid off for LA local supporters of marriage equality, according to Frontiers magazine: Read the rest of this entry »

All the week’s briefs that are fit to tweet: Read the rest of this entry »

I’m sort of stealing this concept from KipEsquire (as I do many links lately).  He calls the feature “comment left elsewhere.  I thought it would be nice to have my own archive here if the comment is one relating to something I usually blog about, this time made on Trust, But Verify which is almost everything I remember about Ronald Reagan’s presidency as a child.  The full text of my comment below the jump.

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Eviscerated Shells

In all the Proposition 8 petitions from the side of the angels for marriage equality, I noticed a word crop up again and again about what the proposition would do if allowed as an amendment:  eviscerate. Read the rest of this entry »

There are several new lawsuits on the California Supreme Court website.  Including a lawsuit from a group of minority advocacy organizations, which want the constitutionality answered about amending the California constitution to remove fundamental civil rights from an unpopular minority.

Meanwhile, as of today, the justices have narrowed the suits and the questions they’ll answer.

The legal questions they’re considering:

• is Proposition 8 legal as an amendment? or is it really a revision, which cannot be done by a voter initiative?
• does Proposition 8 break the doctrine of the separation of powers? petitions maintain it does.
• are the marriages made between June and November 4th still legal marriages today if Proposition 8 is decided as legal?

My predictions, in reverse order:

Read the rest of this entry »

Andrew Sullivan has been writing many posts about the Human Rights Campaign and their inneffectiveness in preventing the passage of Proposition 8 and altso their general lack of impact around marriage equality and civil rights — their raison’ d’etre.

Something that sort of blows my mind is that the No On 8 ads were so useless…. and the Yes On 8 people actually have money left to burn after winning:

After the election, the Committee has remaining surplus funds of over $1.6 million.  Under California law, the Committee is authorized to expend these funds for legal defense “where the litigation arises directly out of… The enactment by the initiative process, of any… constitutional amendment.”

[From the Preliminary Opposition available on the California Supreme Court's web page in messy PDF]

Crap! So they raised the money, spent it well, and had more money left over.  What’s more, because they have money left over and the litigation is about the amendment, they can use the cash.

Pointing Fingers, Drawing Connections

It turns out that the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Days Saints (the Mormons) didn’t just walk the line separating church and state by advocating that all of their members volunteer time and donate cash to Proposition 8 and the slime campaign against marriage equality.

I wrote earlier about the movement to report the Mormons to the IRS.  But there’s a new political action group, Californians Against Hate and they’ve started some legal action against the Mormons for the huge amount of non-monetary contributions given to underwrite Proposition 8 that they apparently have not reported:

Under California Election Law organizations such as the Mormon Church are not required to report activities if they strictly constitute “member communication.” We will explain why we feel that the activities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints went far beyond “member communication,” and were instead specifically targeted at California’s 17 million voters. By not reporting any of these non monetary contributions, the Mormon Church violated the Political Reform Act.

The only mention of compliance was a news story stating that the Mormon Church reported a single non monetary contribution of $2078.00 for Church Elder L. Whitney Clayton’s travel expenses for one trip to California. Was there only one trip? Were no other Church officials traveling to California for such an important campaign?

This sort of activity in political movements is common.  For instance, if a large corporation lets a political action group use its phone lines or meeting rooms, etc., reporting the non-monetary donations keeps things honest.

Similarly, in my working with non-profit organizations, fund-raisers that give away prizes or swag bags worth more than the cost of entry are heavily scrutinez by the IRS as well and annual reports must include in-kind donations amongst other items.

The Californians Against Hate don’t have a lot of special access, it looks like, but they’ve strung together from public knowledge and record many non-monetary contributions.

Let’s see what happens.

Although KipEsquire has written about the chances and likelihood of getting the Mormons on the IRS:

…the Internal Revenue Code only places limit on endorsing particular candidates and not issue advocacy. (The counterargument that LDS engaging in impermissible “lobbying” is also too much of a stretch.)

Court challenges are one thing. Public shaming is one thing. Invoking the tax code is another thing altogether — and doomed to fail. Those disgusted by the soulless cretins who run the Mormon cult should stick to what actually has a chance of working.

[emphasis mine]

I’m not so sure.  Granted, I don’t have his expertise in law or accounting, and I do realize there’s a bias from courts against frivolous lawsuits… I think making the Mormon Church scramble and account for itself and its leaders in the media, in the courts, and on the streets (non-violently, of course) can be what educators and trainers sometimes call multi-channel learning.

The movement for civil rights and marriage equality as a cultural movement with national focus and attention is really just starting.  Leaders will emerge, and so will a strategy and consistent messaging.  Clearly, what’s gone before has failed.  I’m excited by what is just now emerging.

[Image by Bob Boster via Flickr under a creative commons license.]

In their identical motions to intervene in the three petitions filed, thankfully, didn’t repeat all the nauseating reasons to deny marriage equality.

They did, however, seek to interpose themselves using the same arguments they already made to the California Supreme Court — which were rejected.

As I wrote earlier, the court denied their participation as parties to the action:

… that notwithstanding an advocacy group’s strong political or ideological support of a statute or ordinance – and its disagreement with those who question or challenge the validity of the legislation – such a disagreement does not in itself afford the group the right to intervene formally in an action challenging the validity of the measure.

In re Marriage Cases, (S147999) Opinion (PDF) – May 15, 2008, page 20.

The proponents (known as Campaign for California Families but is anything but) site a case People ex rel. Rominger v. County of Trinity (1983) 147 Cal.App.3d 655, 662.

That case involved the Sierra Club, who wanted to participatete because they wanted to represent members who would be harmed by the use of herbicides at issue in the case.

The California Supreme Court specifically addressed this very case.  Quotation after the jump.

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The New Petition Features Couples that Dream of Moments Like This

Something that came to my attention in reading the initial three petitions was that there are new couples’ names listed on the petition from the ACLU and Lambda Legal. Read the rest of this entry »

Inside the California Supreme Court

As KipEsquire notes in one of his hasty stitches:

The litigation, in abstract terms, is not “No on 8 v. Yes on 8? but rather “Gays v. The California Government.” It is not clear whether the bigots are entitled to intervene in the litigation or even file amicus briefs.

I’m not a lawyer, but one of the issues I remember reading in the May decision for marriage equality was this specific issue of standing.

A brief recap: Proposition 22 was the law that was challenged and defeated in May at the California Supreme Court. But one of the items they decided on wasn’t just the disposition of marriage for gay and lesbian couples, but also whether the people who funded Proposition 22 had the legal standing to participate in the court case.

Here’s what the majority opinion ruled: Read the rest of this entry »