The California Supreme Court
issued a writ of Wah-wah (it's Latin for s
ad trombone sound) today to a group called ProjectMarriage, and rejected their request that the State stop issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples while they continue trying to prove in a court of law that gay marriage makes baby Jesus cry.
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"Your honor, right now gay couples all over California are getting married
and finding happiness. I'm sure you'll agree that something must be done."
-Lawyers for ProjectMarriage
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Could you imagine if like Piperlime.com*
came along and got a law passed that made
your marriage illegal? It would be like that. |
So just who is ProjectMarriage and what's their deal? Well, they're a website...yes, a goddamn website run by a group of fundamentalists and homophobes brought together by a common hatred of gay people who, back in 2008, got Prop 8 put on the ballot. It passed but was later found to be unconstitutional by District Court Judge Vaugh Walker, because holy shit you don't put civil rights up for a show of hands. I mean, seriously, what's wrong with you?
Long story short,
they continued to appeal the decision but the
U. S. Supreme Court ruled last month that they didn't have the legal standing to do so.
Why no legal standing for ProjectMarriage.com? Well, first of all they're terrible people, but more importantly you can't defend a law that doesn't affect you in any way and no, gay people getting married doesn't affect your straight (or
original flavor) marriage.
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| Above: Another wedding ruined by gay people...uh, somehow... |
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Pictured: The law. Yeah, I'm not
wading through all of that. |
What, then, is ProjectMarriage.com still doing anywhere near a courthouse? While the Court ruled they don't have the standing to appeal Judge Walker's original decision,
the group is now saying that ruling only refers to the plaintiffs who brought the case and that Prop 8 is still in effect for everyone else. I'm not a legal expert, but my understanding of the ruling (ok, of the
wikipedia article on the ruling) is that Walker's ruling stands and ProjectMarriage.com can go fuck itself.
But what I don't understand is how is this not over yet? How can they make an appeal of the appeal of the appeal? The Supreme Court said that their case has all the legal weight of a leprechaun suing the Easter Bunny for full custody of the color orange, so shouldn't they like shut up and go away now?
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"Sometimes, you have to stand up and fight for what's yours
no matter what the world says, or how imaginary you are..."
-Some leprechaun
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*That's just an example, Piperlime would never do that. They're a progressive and open-minded company that sells excellent, uh, I don't know, shoes, I think?
The problem is that the SCOTUS, Antonin "You had no idea how terrible human beings could be before you read anything I ever wrote" Scalia's whining aside, didn't really decide anything ultimately. They said that the plaintiffs didn't have standing to defend the law, so hopefully that precedent will mean no more random conglomerations of assholes being allowed to defend bullshit laws that the state has no interest in preserving. However, they didn't make any broad statement or ruling about gay marriage. Letting the initial judgement stand in this way doesn't technically make it impossible for the prop 8 overturn decision to be further appealed. It would be nice if projectshithead or whatever couldn't appeal it, and frankly I think that should be the case, but their very highly paid and clearly immoral lawyers are going to try to make the case that it just means that they can't appeal it in certain ways, so here are new (and equally bullshit no doubt) ways instead!
ReplyDeleteAt this point though, I think they are effectively done. They are swiftly going to run afoul of nobody caring about their fee fees being hurt by other people being happier and more free, and also of CA laws against wasting everybody's goddamned time in the court system. I think they might be able to spend a surprisingly long time wasting money losing over and over, but that is as far as I think it will go.