By Carol J. Williams|May 27, 2009
For many same-sex couples married in California last year, Tuesday's state Supreme Court decision that their marriages are legal induced conflicting emotions and vows to lead by example in the intensifying battle for acceptance.
"The community is happy that 18,000 of us are married. We will lead an army of love warriors to fight for our rights," said Robin Tyler, 67, who moved to California from Canada decades ago because she expected the state to be more progressive in its attitude toward gays.
Tyler and her wife, Diane Olson, insisted that their cultural isolation will be a uniting force in the gay rights movement that they expect to become more radicalized by the California high court's decision to uphold Proposition 8, the voter initiative banning further gay marriage.
"We're out here with the people who can't get married. We're not divided at all. If anything, the Supreme Court has strengthened our resolve," Tyler said as she took part in a protest with other disappointed gay couples in East Los Angeles.
Legal experts were divided and perplexed by the court ruling upholding Proposition 8 while affirming the validity of the marriages conducted in the six months before the November vote. But they agreed with the sentiment expressed by Tyler, that the legally married "island" will provide a stage on which gays can demonstrate to opponents that same-sex marriage poses no threat to society.
"One role that the 18,000 couples will play, whether they want to play it or not, is exemplars of how the world won't come to an end, that simply living their lives and protecting their families and interacting with others in California will demonstrate that no damage is done to the marriages of opposite sex couples, that there is no damage to children of same-sex couples, that all of California society and the economy will benefit from the kind of stability that will come from legal recognition of these relations," said UC Berkeley law professor Joan Hollinger.
She saw the justices' decision as "convoluted and contorted," narrowly focused to exclude broader constitutional issues and vague in dealing with unanswered questions arising from the on-again, off-again right of gays to marry in California.
"How do you treat couples from Massachusetts? From Canada? I'm asking these questions because I actually don't have a clue," Hollinger said of the ruling that ran 185 pages, much of it explaining the justices' seesawing on the issue over the last five years.
