Lambda & ACLU File Lawsuit to Toss Prop 8

On November 5, 2008, the day after the horrifying hate election of November 4, 2008 where California voters appear to have passed Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage attempt at a Constitutional amendment, Lambda Legal Defense and the ACLU filed an Amended Petition for Extraordinary Relief Including Writ of Mandate and Request for Immediate Injuctive Relief.

And the No on 8 campaign has not conceded yet either as California has 30 days to count all the ballots and there can be at least 3 million ballots yet to be counted which could reverse the outcome of Proposition 8 as it is very close. As of Nov 5 at 7:05 p.m., Prop 8 passes with 52% of the vote or 5,387,000. votes

The Petition for Writ of Mandate and Injunctive Relief filed on November 5, 2008 in the California Supreme Court is Strauss v. Horton, Action No. S168047, at
http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.gov/search/case/mainCaseScreen.cfm?dist=0&doc_id=566226&doc_no=S168047

The full text may be found at:
http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/relationships/37709lgl20081105.html

The press releases on this subject from the ACLU may be found at:
http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/relationships/37706prs20081105.html
and
http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/relationships/37701prs20081105.html

California will continue to honor the 18,000 same sex marriages that were performed before November 4, 2008 as this heinous "Constitutional amendment" is not retroactive.

The Petition for Writ of Mandate is based on the excellent premise that Proposition 8 "is invalid because it would constitute a CONSTITUTIONAL REVISION, not a constitutional amendment, and AS SUCH, THE CALIFORNIA CONSTITUTION PROVIDES THAT IT MAY NOT BE ENACTED BY INITIATIVE."

The Petition does an excellent job of discussing the history of civil rights struggles and the necessity of California courts to exercise "their core, traditional constitutional role of protecting the established equality rights of a minority." “If permitted to stand, Proposition 8 would strike directly at the foundational constitutional principle of equal protection in a manner that far transcends its immediate impact on a particular group, by establishing that an unpopular group may be selectively stripped of fundamental rights by a simple majority of voters.”

“Such an attempt to mandate government discrimination against a vulnerable minority in our state’s Constitution, and to prevent the courts from fulfilling their quintessential constitutional role of protecting minorities, would work such a drastic change in our constitutional system that it must be regarded as a REVISION rather than an amendment.”

“Proposition 8 opens the door to step-by-step elimination of state constitutional protections for lesbian and gay Californians and, indeed, for other disfavored minorities, perhaps even based on other suspect classifications.” “See, e.g., Martin Niemöller’s now classic formulation of the dangers posed by failing to recognize that permitting the government to discriminate against one disfavored group undermines the freedom of all: First they came for the Communists but I was not a Communist so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Socialists and the Trade Unionists, but I was not one of them, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews but I was not Jewish, so I did not speak out. And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me.”

Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was a German anti-fascist preacher imprisoned at Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937-1945.

As labor says, an injury to one is an injury to all.

We, the supporters of the gay liberation movement, both gay and straight, will not rest until gay marriage is legal.