Attorneys David Boies and Ted Olson represented opposing sides in the 2000 election recount, but are now working together.

Editor’s Note: Today the Supreme Court declined to hear a case that would challenge the U.S. military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy that prohibits openly gay people from serving. The appeal came from the plaintiff in Pietrangelo v. Gates, James E. Pietrangelo II, who was discharged from the military for exposing his sexual orientation. A combat veteran and Arabic translator who served in Iraq, Lt. Daniel Choi is also gay and after announcing so on national television, he, too, will be officially discharged from the army tomorrow, June 9. Since his public annoucement, Choi has become oustpoken opponent of the policy. He writes here about the California Supreme Court's most recent ruling on gay marriage and will speak with Anderson about the controversial policy tonight on AC 360º at 10 p.m. ET.

Army National Guard Lt. Dan Choi has joined the fight against the military's controversial policy regarding sexual orientation.

Lt. Daniel Choi
Former U.S. Army combat soldier and Arabic translator

The recent ruling by the California Supreme Court upholding the referendum that stripped away the right of same-sex couples to marry was a wake-up call to me and so many others who thought entitlements and rights would be granted without a struggle. As I fight to keep my own job in the Army and essentially, the jobs of thousands of other gay American soldiers who want to serve their country, I am reminded of what it means to be American. Being American does not mean waiting for others to grant us freedom. Americans don’t hide from doing the right thing. Americans believe in responsibilities. Americans take courage. Americans stand up.

I am a native Californian but I had never marched in a protest, never spoke at a rally. I never felt motivated or compelled. After hearing about the court’s 6-1 ruling, I spoke at the Asian-Pacific Islander and Latino Rally in East LA, then a press conference for the Courage Campaign, then a rally in West Hollywood, then marched with thousands through the streets of LA. We rallied for love, We spoke for love, We marched for love. I wore my boots that survived a tour in Iraq and knew that if they were good enough for war, they were good enough for love. There are many things worth fighting for, but as a soldier, I know that LOVE is worth fighting for.

The reason I came out of the closet was that I had found love. For the first time in my life I entered a love relationship: one of commitment, intimacy, and growth. I felt complete and empowered. I felt the support I wanted for so long. I became a better man, a better partner, a better soldier. I knew that the joy of having a boyfriend was worth sharing with my friends, my fellow soldiers, my family. I also knew how devastating and poisonous the closet was and how crippling and alone it felt. It is a toxic disease to stay in the closet, hiding and deceiving our families, neighbors and co-workers about who we are. The remedy is to stand up and be honest with ourselves, with our loved ones. So we took to the streets and showed publicly that when it comes to acknowledgment, when it comes to our freedoms, we no longer ASK. We TELL.

I believe that the greatest thing we can do to express our love is to share it. When we come out to our parents, we share it because we love them. When we show our love to our neighbors, we do it because we love them and want them to understand. My own parents do not accept my identity, they have made it very clear that they condemn and hate “my sin.” They say they love me but hate my sin. My only response to them is that I love them. I love them unconditionally. I love them without “but” or “except” and I share the truth with them because I love them without deception.

Some people have asked what I got involved with first: Repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell or Marriage Equality. I have a difficult time answering that question because when we realize the discrimination of one, we uncover the discrimination of the other. Some ask me what is more important, as if I understand what is politically feasible, what fits within the timeline of Congress or the President, or the elections. I have no idea what the political timelines look like. I think if I tried, my head would explode. All I know as far as timeline is concerned is that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is wrong right now, and everyday we wait to repeal it we let the poison infect our soldiers. Everyday we let Marriage Discrimination stand, we let the poison infect our families, our couples, our neighbors. The remedy for both is integrity and honesty- these American values do not go by timelines, they are needed 24 hours a day.

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more on the the reaction to the California Supreme Court's ruling on Proposition 8 tonight on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Protesters gather outside the California Supreme Court in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Times

For the last decade, the battle over same-sex marriage and other rights for gay couples has been hard fought in U.S. courts and legislatures and at the ballot box. Use this map to view milestones in the fight and how state laws have changed since 2000.

Check out this interactive to see a time line of the same-sex debate.

CNN

A crowd protests the court ruling upholding Proposition 8 in Los Angeles, California, Tuesday.

Opponents of California's voter-approved ban on same-sex marriages launched a new court challenge Wednesday, led by lawyers who were on opposite sides of the case that settled the 2000 presidential race.

Attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies have asked a federal judge to block California from enforcing the ban, known as Proposition 8.

"We are two lawyers from opposite ends of the political spectrum who have come together to support one of the most important issues of our time," Olson told reporters. The case "is not about liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican. We're here in part to symbolize that," he added. Wednesday's lawsuit was filed on behalf of two same-sex couples who have been denied marriage licenses under Proposition 8. A federal judge in San Francisco has set a July 2 hearing on the matter.

"Our Constitution guarantees every American the right to be treated equally under the law," Boies said. "There is no right more fundamental than the right to marry the person you love and to raise a family."

Olson was the lead attorney for George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida recount. Boies, meanwhile, was the top legal strategist for former Vice President Al Gore, that year's Democratic presidential nominee.

California's Supreme Court rejected a challenge to the marriage ban Tuesday, but left intact about 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted before voters approved the ban in November. The court rejected arguments that the measure improperly amended the state constitution.

Read more...

Ashby Jones
The Wall Street Journal Blog

Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in California, faced a constitutionality test but was upheld.

Tuesday was a bad day for opponents of Proposition 8 for an obvious reason: the California Supreme Court upheld the ballot initiative, passed last November by California voters and which bans same-sex marriage in the Golden State.

But once these same opponents finish reading the court’s 136-page decision and digesting what the justices had to say about revisions to the state constitution, they perhaps had even more reason to feel chagrined.

This LA Times article lays out the issue well.

At issue in the case was whether Proposition 8 was properly defined as a constitutional revision or a constitutional amendment. The former requires an act of the legislature; the latter can be effected by a popular vote. In describing Proposition 8’s “limited effect,” the majority said that simply reserving the term “marriage” for opposite-sex couples “does not have a substantial, or, indeed, even a minimal effect on the governmental plan or framework of California that existed prior to the amendment.” [emphasis in original]. In other words, in order for a constitutional change to be deemed a revision — and therefore require legislative action — the change need alter the “governmental plan or framework of California.”

Read more...

Rob Thomas
The Huffington Post

I am a straight man, with a big gay chip on my shoulder.

A while back on my Twitter page (yes, I know how ridiculous it sounds), I mentioned that, if I believed in the devil, Pat Robertson might be him.

Being a fairly liberal-leaning guy with either liberal friends or Republican and Christian friends who don't believe that being one has anything to do with the other, I was surprised at how many people took offense to what I had to say.

These people weren't friends of Mr. Robertson but friends, apparently, of God. They had "spoken" with him and he had assured them that he was no friend of the gays. He also told them that he loved America more than any other country and was a huge fan of Dancing With the Stars.

The small controversy or "Twitter-versy" (patent on phrase pending) all started when I had made the mistake of asking why two people of the same sex shouldn't be able to make the same life-long commitment and (more importantly) under the same god, as straight people. Why can't my gay friends be as happily married as my wife and I? It seemed simple to me, but let me start off by telling you a series of things that I believe to be true:

Read more...

Guest host John King and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom discuss the same sex marriage ban in California.

Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in California, faced a constitutionality test but was upheld.

Tony Perkins
AC360° Contributor
President, Family Research Council

At every opportunity, the people of California have voted to protect marriage. Nine years, two ballot initiatives, and two lawsuits later, the state's Supreme Court finally respected that decision, upholding Proposition 8's ban on counterfeit marriage in a 6-1 ruling.

A year after imposing same-sex 'marriage' on the state, the same court that initiated the controversy surrendered to the more than seven million voters who, on November 4, upheld the historical definition of marriage as the union of a man and woman.

In FRC's amicus brief, we argued that the effort to overturn Proposition 8 "strikes directly at the heart of California's system of government."

The court acknowledged its limitations in today's opinion, stating, "Regardless of our views as individuals on this question of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to confine our consideration to a determination of the constitutional validity and legal effect of the measure in question."

Read More...

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more on the ruling on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

A recent poll shows that those who have a gay friend or relative are more likely to support gay marriage.

Barclay Palmer
AC360° Senior Producer

The California Supreme Court's 6-1 ruling was 135 pages, but its key rationale that Prop 8 was a "permissible" amendment to California's constitution was summed up in a few lines.

The dissent, summed up in two paragraphs, joined same-sex marriage proponents in arguing that Prop 8 violates the "equal protection" clause of the California constitution and federal civil rights law.

Many believe that the ruling will be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, or that there will be another voter referendum on it.

Here are key quotes from the ruling - and the dissent.

From the ruling by Chief Justice George:

In summary, we conclude that Proposition 8 constitutes a permissible constitutional amendment (rather than an impermissible constitutional revision), does not violate the separation of powers doctrine, and is not invalid under the “inalienable rights” theory proffered by the Attorney General. We further conclude that Proposition 8 does not apply retroactively and therefore that the marriages of same-sex couples performed prior to the effective date of Proposition 8 remain valid.

Having determined that none of the constitutional challenges to the adoption of Proposition 8 have merit, we observe that if there is to be a change to the state constitutional rule embodied in that measure, it must “find its expression at the ballot box.”

From the dissent by Justice Moreno:

Proposition 8 represents an unprecedented instance of a majority of voters altering the meaning of the equal protection clause by modifying the California Constitution to require deprivation of a fundamental right on the basis of a suspect classification. The majority’s holding is not just a defeat for same-sex couples, but for any minority group that seeks the protection of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.

This could not have been the intent of those who devised and enacted the initiative process. In my view, the aim of Proposition 8 and all similar initiative measures that seek to alter the California Constitution to deny a fundamental right to a group that has historically been subject to discrimination on the basis of a suspect classification, violates the essence of the equal protection clause of the California Constitution and fundamentally alters its scope and meaning. Such a change cannot be accomplished through the initiative process by a simple amendment to our Constitution enacted by a bare majority of the voters; it must be accomplished, if at all, by a constitutional revision to modify the equal protection clause to protect some, rather than all, similarly situated persons. I would therefore hold that Proposition 8 is not a lawful amendment of the California Constitution.

CNN

California's Supreme Court upheld Tuesday a ban on same-sex marriages that state voters passed in November, but it allowed about 18,000 same-sex marriages performed before the ban to remain valid.

The ruling was met with chants of "shame on you" from a crowd of about 1,000 people who gathered outside the court building in San Francisco.

The court made the ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8. Opponents wanted the amendment nullified. They said the proposition alters California's Constitution and, therefore, under state law, was a revision that requires a constitutional convention.

Attorneys for the opponents also said the proposition, which removed the "marriage" label from same-sex unions, effectively deprived same-sex couples of a fundamental right guaranteed them under the equal-protection clause in the U.S. Constitution.

Justices asked many questions when they heard arguments in the case in March but didn't indicate which way they leaned, instead focusing on winnowing out each attorney's individual argument on the issue.

Keep Reading...

Joneil Adriano
AC360° Producer

On Tuesday, the eyes of the nation will be watching California, during what is being billed as the "Day of Decision" by marriage equality activists all across the land. Why? Because the California Supreme Court is expected to issue its highly anticipated ruling on whether or not Proposition 8, the controversial ballot initiative which amended the state constitution to ban gay marriage, should be upheld or invalidated.

After the oral arguments in March, many court watchers predicted that the Supreme Court would respect the will of the voters and allow Prop. 8 to stand. If that is indeed the case, those who support same-sex marriage will hold protests across the country. If the justices surprise everyone by overturning it, those protests will become celebrations.

For those on both sides of the issue, the stakes are high. For one thing, there are an estimated 20,000 gay couples who are, for now, legally married in the state. Will the court allow those marriages to continue, or will they be forcibly annulled?

Also, California is the biggest state in the union in terms of population. Whichever side wins tomorrow will claim a big victory - and momentum.

But taking a step back for a moment, it does seem as if the train has already left the station. Since the California court took up this issue, three other states have begun granting same-sex couples the right to marry: Iowa, Vermont, and Maine. New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey are poised to follow.

The Golden State has had a reputation for being a trend setter on policy matters over the years, but on this issue, at least, it seems lagging. Northeastern states are the ones driving the agenda now.

In deed, a new front has already been opened up in Massachusetts, which started performing the first same-sex marriages five years ago. There, a lawsuit filed on behalf of 19 gays and lesbians - including the widower of Gerry Studds, the first openly gay Congressman - challenges provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act that prohibit the federal government from recognizing lesbian and gay couples.

This lawsuit alleges that the law discriminates against married lesbian and gay couples by denying them rights like Social Security spousal benefits, family medical leave, and the ability to file taxes jointly.

No doubt challenges to another DOMA provision - that which allows states to deny recognition to legally performed same-sex marriages in other states - are in the works. President Obama has said he would like to see DOMA repealed.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to underplay the importance of a California victory for supporters of marriage equality. They want it just as badly as their opponents.

But these days, it does seem that proponents of traditional marriage are the ones who need it more. For more than a decade, they have marched across the country easily passing one same-sex marriage ban after another. But that movement seems to have now stalled, and marriage equality activists are the ones on the offensive.

Anderson Cooper talks with a panel about the same sex marriage hearings being held in the California Supreme Court.

Tamara Audi and Geoffrey A. Fowler
The Wall Street Journal

The California Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday in a case that seeks to overturn the state's ban on same-sex marriage. But far from delivering the final word on the matter, the court's eventual ruling appears likely only to set the stage for more battles to come.

"It's going to be an ongoing struggle," said the Rev. Sam Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Mr. Rodriguez opposes gay marriage.

Mr. Rodriguez and others have begun planning a campaign to recall any justices who rule to overturn the constitutional amendment effectively banning gay marriage. Meanwhile, proponents of same-sex marriage have been holding rallies and collecting signatures and are launching new TV commercials.

Read more...

Angel D. Hernandez and Johnny Foam join a same-sex marriage rally Wednesday in Los Angeles, California.

John Schwartz and Liz Robbins
The New York Times

For more than three hours on Thursday, California Supreme Court justices aggressively challenged lawyers who sought to overturn an initiative banning same-sex marriage that was passed by voters last November.

As the hearing progressed, hundreds of supporters and opponents of the initiative, Proposition 8, gathered on the steps of the courthouse here bearing signs, banners and a sense of tense anticipation.

“We knew we had to be here to see it with our own eyes,” said Katherine Stoner, 61, who had traveled from Monterey, Calif., with her partner of 34 years, Michelle Welsh.

Read more...

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

Jami Floyd
AC360° Contributor
In Session Anchor

Today, the California Supreme Court heard arguments on whether to overturn Proposition 8, the state initiative that outlawed gay marriage last November.

Gay marriage is one of those polarizing issues in American life — like abortion and gun control. People stake out a position and they don’t want to hear what anyone on the other side has to say. But I am here to tell you that, even if you are opposed to gay marriage, even if you voted for Prop 8, you want to listen up; because this case isn’t just about gay marriage. It’s much bigger than that.

This case is about the civil rights of all Californians, and by extension, all Americans. With the ban on gay marriage, California did something that no other state in the history of this country has done: It took away an already established civil right. Imagine someone suddenly telling you your marriage is no longer valid – for whatever reason.

I have said before that Prop 8 was mean-spirited and it was. But more to the point, it was unprecedented. And it’s not the kind of precedent we want in America. This country was founded on the principal that the majority, well intentioned or not can’t simply erase the rights of the minority. That’s just plain un-American.

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear more about what Tony Perkins has to say about Prop 8 on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

Demonstrators hold signs outside the California Supreme Court hearing in San Francisco.

Tony Perkins
President of the Family Research Council

The oral arguments before the California Supreme Court are quite interesting. While I am sure there are a number of poker players on the court, their line of questioning seems to be showing deference to the people of California.

The Attorney General's office, which is supposed to defend state laws, attempted to argue that the amendment should be overturned by the court. Christopher Krueger argued this not because the amendment was a "revision" of the constitution as the other opponents claimed, but because you cannot take away an inalienable right. Mr. Krueger, however, could not provide a definition for "inalienable."

The justices' questions to Krueger seemed to have a sharp edge leaving him somewhat flustered.

Ken Starr is concluding his arguments now for the validity of the constitutional amendment.

Read more...

Program Note: Tune in tonight to hear the latest news about the Proposition 8 in CA. on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.

CNN

The California Supreme Court began hearing arguments Thursday in a case that could determine the fate of same-sex marriage in the state, as well as the validity of about 18,000 same-sex marriages.

The court is tackling the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a measure banning same-sex marriage that voters approved in November.

Its opponents are seeking to have the amendment nullified. They maintain Proposition 8 alters the state constitution and therefore, under state law, is a revision that requires a constitutional convention.

The state Supreme Court ruled in May that the California Constitution allows same-sex couples to marry.

Arguments on Thursday took place in a packed courtroom. Because of heavy interest in the hearing, officials installed big-screen televisions to accommodate onlookers in the court auditorium, which seats about 200.

More than 60 friend-of-the-court briefs have been filed in the case, a court spokeswoman said.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered in San Francisco's Castro District on Wednesday night to push for the court to reinstate same-sex marriage in California.

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.

Keep reading...

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.

I have become involved in the Gay and Lesbian Studies program at Yale University, where I studied as an undergraduate. In that capacity, I have spent time with Larry Kramer, the well-known playwright and activist who started the program. I hear his stories about being gay at Yale in the 1950s, when every effort was made to “cure” him, and I wonder how he ever managed to stay alive and intact in the face of that era’s view of gay people. I am not sure I could have survived it. I also spend time with the current undergraduates, and looking at them I feel a great envy for the life they have, and think how, if I had been of college age now instead of in the 1980s, I might have avoided years of self-hatred and confusion and self-flagellation, and perhaps had the early, open, happy romantic life that seems now to be available to so many students. I could have imagined for myself the future I am having now, one of marriage and family and relative social sanction—a future that hardly occurred to me at the time. Describing the gap between the Kramer-Solomon-Today generations to some of the undergraduates, I concluded by saying to them that I hoped that when they revisit the campus in twenty years, they will feel a similar sad longing for the lives of a new generation, so much more free and so much more full of hope than anything they can now imagine. Perhaps they will live in a time when gay lives are neither easier nor more difficult than straight ones, when gay hopes need not be different from straight ones, when the language of the gay and straight worlds do not differ.

I have a one-year-old daughter, and John and I are expecting another child in spring. I would like them to grow up with the social affirmation that their gay parents' relationship was as valid as anyone else's. The success of Proposition 8 hurts not just me and my husband, but also those children, and all the people who don't have the right to emigrate to England in case society persistently denies us our due. Progress in gay rights over the past twenty years has been astonishing, but those advances have whipped up latent hatreds among the opposition and blunted the sense of urgency among people who consider themselves on our side. Too many people see language as a minor reflection of the reality we aspire to, but language is that reality.

Our fight for equality, at this otherwise euphoric moment, and our belief that separate but equal is not equal, are perceived by even our supporters as being somehow shrill. Gay marriage is not merely a matter of self-interest for gay people in relationships who want to use a fancy word to refer to their intimacies; it is an issue of human justice, of affording affirmation in a world that suffers a severe shortage of love and of joy.