WELCOME BACK we missed you, we love you, we’re glad you’re back. This is the last day of the trial where evidence (like witnesses) can be entered, and also the day we say goodbye to the man who has brought us such a bright and beautiful rainbow of feelings, Dr. David Blankenhorn. Does it feel like the last episode of Friends? Are you going to cry? I hope not. His cross-examination continues right… now!

If you’re a person of the future, catch up on the entire trial here: Judgment Daze. And look, we made it all the way to the end without Alex fixing the typo in the Judgment Graphic. However, it is good looking isn’t it? And as Alex has pointed out, they spell it that way in the UK.

Queerty was watching yesterday and they also found Blankenhorn to be a big disaster.

Full Story from Autostraddle
Click here for gay marriage resources in California.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Hellloooooooo gorgeous! How are you? Are you ready for more of our terrible/AWESOME make-you-laugh-then-cry-then-laugh-harder Professional Frenemy Kenneth Miller? Good, because that’s what’s happening. When I was a babyqueer I used to play Little League baseball (on a boy’s team, obvs) and we had a “Slaughter Rule,” which was that if the other team was more than like seven runs ahead you could just give up. I would be lying if I said I were not hoping a little bit that that might just happen today, and everyone could leave the courthouse and go to Panera. Let’s find out!

We are going pretty easy on the guy to start; Boies is pretty much just saying numbers and asking Miller to confirm that these numbers exist, which seems like it should be doable. “32% of population that attended church weekly voted yes on Prop. 8 84% of the time. Consistent with your understanding?” Yes. Duh.

Remember when Miller was all up in our grills about how gays are Super Powerful Like Superman because farm workers’ unions are on our side? Yeah, it turns out that when asked how labor unions tended to vote on Prop 8, he doesn’t know. Okay, Jesus, this is getting ridiculous. He is like a giant baby!

Full Story from Autostraddle
Click here for gay marriage resources.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Today was one of the most dramatic days of the trial, with startling admissions by the proponents’ two expert witnesses: Professor Kenneth Miller, testifying about the political power of gay people, and David Blankenhorn, testifying about the purposes of marriage.

The morning began with the conclusion of David Boies’s cross-examination of Professor Miller. Boies confronted Prof. Miller with several of Prof. Miller’s own earlier writings, which were highly critical of the ballot initiative process and particularly highlighted the risk that majorities will use the initiative process to target minority groups. Prof. Miller admitted that ballot measures can, and have, drawn upon anti-minority sentiment. Indeed, one of Prof. Miller’s own articles cited Proposition 22, the California initiative prohibiting marriage for same-sex couples that passed in 2000, as an example of such an anti-minority initiative.

Following the conclusion of Prof. Miller’s testimony, the afternoon was taken up by questioning of the proponents’ final witness, David Blankenhorn, the president of a private think tank called the Institute for American Values. Blankenhorn is best known as the author of a book called Fatherless America, in which he argued that fatherlessness is “the most harmful demographic trend of this generation” and the leading cause of “our most urgent social problems, from crime to adolescent pregnancy to child sexual abuse to domestic violence against women.” Blankenhorn is also one of the most visible and culturally influential opponents of marriage for same-sex couples.

Full Story from Pam’s House Blend
Click here for gay marriage resources in California.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Monday, Jan. 25, was not a good day for Claremont McKenna College political science professor Kenneth Miller. Appearing as an expert witness for proponents of Proposition 8, he was the defense lead-off in the federal bench trial challenging California’s same-sex marriage ban. He was originally called in to show the political clout of the LGBT community that the proponents say make court intervention unnecessary. But his testimony came off as ill informed and ill prepared under cross-examination from plaintiffs attorney David Boies.

Boies conceded Miller’s expertise in American politics but challenged his credentials as an expert on LGBT discrimination. Defense attorney David Thompson claimed he had focused on LGBT politics from the 1970s on.

Boies, however, sharply asked him what the Mattachine Society was. Miller did admitted he didn’t know what that seminal pre-Stonewall gay-rights organizations was when he was deposed earlier. Since then, he countered, he studied their role in LGBT activism. OK, Boies, continued, so who’s Allen Spears and Elaine Noble? He didn’t know.

Full Story from Edge Boston
Click here for gay marriage resources.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.

Today was another exciting day as the Prop 8 trial heads into the home stretch. The plaintiffs finished their case today, and defendants got started with their first witness, Professor Kenneth Miller.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys closed their case by playing excerpts from two simulcasts that were broadcast to gatherings of evangelical voters during the Prop 8 campaign. These simulcasts were sponsored and paid for by ProtectMarriage.com, the official Yes on 8 campaign organization. In the portions shown, one speaker said, “The polygamists are waiting in the wings, because if a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, the polygamists are going to use that exact same argument and they probably are going to win.” Another speaker referred to a man marrying a horse, and a third speaker compared the impact of permitting same-sex couples to marry to the 9/11 attacks.

The videos of these outrageous statements, made in a forum sponsored and paid for by the official Yes on 8 campaign, provided a fitting end to the plaintiffs’ case. It brought the focus back to the long history of demonization the LGBT community has faced in the public sphere– from the grim historical events described in Professor George Chauncey’s testimony two weeks ago to the themes of the Yes on 8 campaign, as shown in today’s videos and the highly inflammatory testimony of Prop 8 proponent Dr. Bill Tam. The plaintiffs have done an admirable job of laying out the case that Prop 8 was a product of the same kind of prejudice that has driven many other anti-gay laws throughout our nation’s history.

Full Story from Pam’s House Blend
Click here for gay marriage resources in California.
To subscribe to this blog, use the rss feed on the right, or use the form at right to join our email list. You can also email us at info@purpleunions.com. Or find us on Facebook – just search for Gay Marriage Watch (you’ll see our b/w wedding pic overlooking the Ferry Building and Bay Bridge in SF). We’re also tweeting daily at http://www.twitter.com/gaymarriagewatc.