Gay rights activists have been protesting outside Mormon temples since the passage of Proposition 8.

Nicholas Riccardi
Los Angeles Times

In June, leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made a fateful decision. They called on California Mormons to donate their time and money to the campaign for Proposition 8, which would overturn a state Supreme Court ruling that permitted gay marriage.

That push helped the initiative win narrow passage on election day. And it has made the Mormon Church, which for years has striven to be seen as part of the American mainstream, a political target.

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Anderson talks with his panel in a heated discussion over same-sex marriage in light of the passage of Proposition 8.

Editor’s Note: Andrew Solomon is the author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, which won the 2001 National Book Award, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and has been published in 24 languages. He is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, and writes for The New Yorker and The New York Times. He is also the author of the novel A Stone Boat and of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost.

Andrew Solomon
Author, The Noonday Demon

My partner John and I tied the knot on June 30th last year. John had wanted to get married for some time, and we could have done so in Massachusetts, but gay marriage has no federal recognition there, and thus offers none of the myriad legal protections that heterosexual marriage entails, so I felt that it would be something of a sham. Then Great Britain passed a law giving civil partnership legally identical status to marriage.

Because I am a dual national, it made sense for us to get hitched over there: if we ever decided to give up our US citizenship, we would be treated as each other’s next of kin, and would not be taxed on each other’s estates. The name may be less than in Massachusetts, but the rights are more.

Even after our well-attended celebration of union, I was shy of calling our relationship a marriage, and social reserve made me leery of using the word husband in referring to John; it seemed unmasculine and almost kitsch. Over time, though, I found myself increasingly incensed by the opposition to gay marriage and I recognized the use of that term as a tool in the battle for civil rights. My hesitancy owed to a society that had always made me feel that I could assume my real identity only at a cost.

Gradually, however, I’ve become convinced that words and rights are ultimately inseparable, and that it is pusillanimous for me to call John anything other than my husband. Linguistic apartheid gives license to those who would treat us as lesser citizens, and our love as an inferior love. It exacts a price, compromising our feeling of participation in the great history of love that our parents’ marriages reflected. Philip Larkin’s poem about a tomb in which the remains of a husband and wife were placed together, ends, “What will remain of us is love.” Marriage is the institution by which that love is sanctified, for better or worse—the mechanism of that remaining.

Since our wedding, I’ve gone from mild advocate to passionate supporter of gay marriage, of unions but especially of marriage itself. In the grand scheme of things, I’d rather have an election that brought in Obama and failed on marriage than the other way around, and I am almost embarrassingly excited about our new president. But it has been a bitter pill to hear the throngs shouting for joy about this election, while so many gay men and lesbians are being hit with a sense of how regressive society is about our rights and priorities.

Activists have consoled us that gay marriage will end up winning, but I don’t want to be the equivalent of the 106-year-old woman Obama lionized in his victory speech, winding down old age with the satisfying experience of seeing prejudice finally fall. I may have to wait that long to vote for a gay candidate for the presidency, but I will not wait so long for permission to refer to John as my husband not as an affectation but as a matter of national legal record, affirming the same rights and the same status between us that our heterosexual married friends and family enjoy.

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Prop 8 protesters on the streets of Los Angeles

Editor’s Note: You can read more Jami Floyd blogs on “In Session”

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

I am going to go out on a limb here and say this about gay marriage: California got it wrong and Connecticut has it right. And I say this to you as a Christian - one who reads the Bible and goes to church and prays with my children. Because to me Proposition 8, well it just doesn’t seem like the Christian thing to do.

The courts in California gave gay people the right to marry. And now, voters have taken that right away. And that’s downright mean-spirited. Now, my Christian brothers and sisters are quick to tell me that they are okay with civil unions. But that marriage is between a man and a women. My friends say they are tolerant. But is tolerant the best we can do in this country? Doesn’t the Constitution require something more? Isn’t this country about equal protection for all Americans? Not just some of us.

And I know, there have always been those who resist change. They opposed the abolition of slavery. They opposed civil rights. They opposed inter-marriage and now they oppose gay marriage too. But time and time again we do the right thing and time and time again the Constitution prevails. Because the greatness of America is not rooted in intolerance.

This country is great precisely because we recognize the fundamental rights of all Americans — black and white, male and female and yes, gay and straight.

Statement from Ellen DeGeneres
Host, “The Ellen DeGeneres Show“

Watching the returns on election night was an amazing experience. Barack Obama is our new president. Change is here.  I, like millions of Americans, felt like we had taken a giant step towards equality.  We were watching history.

This morning, when it was clear that Proposition 8 had passed in California, I can’t explain the feeling I had.  I was saddened beyond belief.  Here we just had a giant step towards equality and then on the very next day, we took a giant step away.

I believe one day a “ban on gay marriage” will sound totally ridiculous.  In the meantime, I will continue to speak out for equality for all of us.

Matt Coles
ACLU Director of Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project

After the California Supreme Court’s brilliant, inspiring decision in May, Tuesday’s loss at the polls is a bitter pill. That it follows all the wonderful stories of people getting married, and the Connecticut decision that seemed to put us on a roll, makes it all the more difficult to accept.

But indulge me for a look back in history. In 1982, we passed a domestic partnership law in San Francisco, the country’s first. Despite having carefully laid the groundwork, it was vetoed without warning, and a vote essential to an override defected the next day. It took us seven years to get it passed again. And when we did, our opponents got enough signatures to put it on the ballot in 30 days. We ran one of the most expensive local initiative elections in California history. And we lost, 50.5 to 49.5. In 1990, we put it back on the ballot again and won. But the next year, we had to defend it again against an attempted repeal initiative.

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