[Mb-civic] California Legislature Approves Gay Marriage - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

California Legislature Approves Gay Marriage

By Joe Dignan and John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A01

SACRAMENTO, Sept. 6 -- The California Assembly voted Tuesday to allow 
gay and lesbian couples to marry, making the state's legislature the 
first in the nation to deliberately approve same-sex marriages and 
handing a political hot potato to an already beleaguered Gov. Arnold 
Schwarzenegger (R).

After a vehement floor debate in which legislators quoted the Pledge of 
Allegiance and accused each other of abusing moral principles, the state 
Assembly passed the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, 
which recasts the definition of marriage as between "two persons," not 
between a man and a woman. The state Senate passed the bill last week.

"There are moments in the history of any movement when the corner is 
turned," said Geoff Kors, the executive director of Equality California, 
a gay rights group. "This is it. This is the tipping point."

Advocates of the bill, including Christine Chavez-Delgado, granddaughter 
of Cesar Chavez and an organizer of the United Farm Workers of America, 
and Willie L. Brown, former mayor of San Francisco, argued that the bill 
fit into California's sense of itself as a trendsetter for the rest of 
the country. In 1948, California's Supreme Court became the first state 
court to strike down a law prohibiting interracial marriage. And 
California in 1976 was among the first states to repeal sodomy statues.

But opponents, including conservative Republicans, have argued that the 
law must be stopped in the nation's most populous state because it 
constitutes another assault on the sanctity of the family. Californians 
passed a defense-of-marriage act defining marriage as between a man and 
a woman in 2000, and the state, which mixes freewheeling Marin County 
with culturally conservative Orange County, has emerged as a front line 
in the battle over the bedroom ever since.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090602076.html?nav=hcmodule
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