At roughly 10:00AM this morning, the California Supreme Court overturned the ban on gay marriage!

The court's opinion can be found here: http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S147999.PDF

They voted 4-3!

Yay! Take that, G.W.!

My San Francisco marriage license is legal!

Most definitely a happy day. Though there's many tough political and legal fights ahead (most notably the ballot in November, presuming ~650k of the 1.1 million signatures are legitimate), the small victories are what matters.

Congratulations to all of you who have been, are getting, or will be married in California, State #2 to legally recognize marriage as a right for everyone.

You guys are far behind.

But a early and belated congrats to those who can get married now!

I wonder when someone is going to question the validity of marriage as part of government at all.

Considering you can be married by a judge and marriage is legally binding, I doubt anyone is going to question that marriage is part of the government.

And plus because you don't have to belong to a faith to be married... Someone else had to take care of it or you're going to have a lot of people not getting married and no legal protection to either married person.

No, he's got a point.

Why is the religious concept of marriage and the government recognition of a partnership so linked? Why is something that is essentially a religious-social construct dictated by the government? Why are so many economic benefits linked to a religious construct?

Don't get me wrong - I support gay marriage. I'm a Unitarian Universalist - we were the first major religion to acknowledge same-sex unions in modern times. I've volunteered for pro-marriage candidates in local elections and...yeah, ethos ethos ethos, woo.

But I agree with Daganev (signature time). Marriage doesn't and even shouldn't be so much of a bastardized legal-economic-religious-social construct. There's room for division into (religious and/or social) marriage and (legal and economic) partnership.

There are countries that do that. France comes to mind. You have your religious ceremony, then you have your civil ceremony. I don't know a thing about gay marriage in France, but I do know that the standard-issue French marriage demands both, even of atheists, so I would imagine that you still get the same pressure, even in a much more secular country than the US will be for at least sixty years. We need to kill people off down to Generation X before we can really talk about divorcing church and state again.

Its much more than that.

Say I sleep with 3 women and each of them gives birth to someone but I never got maried to any of them. Say I support those kids, or say I live with all of them. Should the government be giving rights to us and giving us tax breaks to make it easier for me to support them? Same if I'm nurse, and I live with an elderly person and I support them. (related or not)

What exactly is the government gaining/doing with regards to "marriage" at all.



France doesn't "do that" at all. Everyone still sticks to this antiquated system of family and family law dating back from a time where your bloodline and lineage actually had legal ramifications. But really, why should these things exist anymore? There are so many exceptions to the rule. Why is the government "invovled" with some births and family structures but not others. It really just doesn't make any sense when you look at it.

Well... You will get tax breaks for supporting them.

Per Glenn Greenwald's Analysis, the ruling leaves an opening for the state just to drop marriage and recognize only civil unions:

Really? It would pass an audit?

See, that makes sense! Glad I'm not alone on this.

Well... I'd say that oyu should ask your accountant, but they'd probably give you funny looks about adopting children at your age

There very generous rules regarding whom you can claim as a dependent on your tax return. Basically, the general rule is (and there are always tons of exceptions) if someone lives with you, and you pay for more than half of their support, you can claim them as a dependent which allows you various benefits including an additional exemption, potential credits, potential additional itemized deductions, etc. etc. but it'd be the same as if you were a single parent, married filing jointly, etc. (aka, someone with a dependent!)

Most of my close friends have two or three kids allready, so I doubt it

Oh, and there is still no place on a tax form to get a deduction for being a pimp

Try schedule C?

Not to burst everybody's bubble, but the decision will probably be appealed through the 9th circuit court (if an appeal isn't already in the works), which has the reputation for having the largest percentage of its decisions overturned. And with a conservative majority on the Supreme Court...

And, none of the 3 major presidential candidates support gay marriage. Hillary and Obama support civil unions at best.

Actually (according to NPR), the only way for it to be overturned (as this was the California Supreme Court deciding on a California state law) is for the state of California to change the constitution so that law is no longer unconstitutional. If the voters of California turn down the constitutional amendment, the issue's dead in the water.