Julie Small | Brian Watt
May 26, 2009
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A little more than a year after it declared same-sex marriage legal in California, the state Supreme Court today upheld the voter-approved ban on the very same thing. The justices ruled - by a 6-to-1 vote - that last November's Proposition 8 will stand. The decision reveals the state high court's reluctance to tamper with voter-approved constitutional amendments. The court also decided not to tamper the 18,000 or so same-sex marriages that happened under its previous ruling. Those marriages are legal - and will remain so. KPCC's Julie Small was on the steps of the courthouse in San Francisco when the justices issued their decision.

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[Gay activist singing "What the world needs now is love, sweet love, not just for some, but for everyone."]

Julie Small: Minutes before the ruling, hundreds of gay activists sang and chanted outside the California Supreme Court.

Activist (chanting): What do you want?
Crowd: Equality!
Activist: When do you want it?
Crowd: Now!

Small: Then word spread that the judges had voted to uphold Proposition 8 – the voter-approved ban on gay marriage.

Activists (screaming): No! No! No!

Small: Ellen Pontac and her wife Shelly Bailes sobbed and hugged each other when they heard the court also upheld the legality of the marriage license they and 18,000 other gay couples got last year. But Shelly Bailes says that's not good enough.

Shelly Bailes: It's not about our marriage. It's about equality in this world. It's about equality in the United States! It's horrible! How can they take rights away from people?

Small: Just yards away supporters of Proposition 8 unrolled a new blue and yellow banner. It read "Celebrate Proposition 8."

Yana Kulinich: I'm really happy Prop 8 was upheld.

Small: College student Yana Kulinich and a group from American River College in Sacramento held that banner. Kulinich says she supports marriage between a man and a woman only. So did a majority of California voters when they passed Proposition 8.

Kulinich: The people voted – and if we want the voices to be heard, we shouldn't go against what the people are voting.

Small: At a news conference at San Francisco City Hall, gay activists vowed to overturn Proposition 8 with a proposition of their own. They're working on a measure that would reinstate same-sex marriage in California – and they're aiming for a vote next year.

Brian Watt: I'm Brian Watt in South Los Angeles – where a coalition of faith leaders and groups that support same-sex marriage met at the Lucy Florence Cultural Center to hear the Prop 8 ruling and offer their reactions. Susan Russell of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena and California Faith for Equality spoke as the mother of a son on active duty in the U.S. Army.

Susan Russell: I think it's shocking that the day after Memorial Day, that we would stand here in California and watch our own Supreme Court allow discrimination for the first time in the history of the United States be written into the constitution.

Watt: Many of the activists say the ruling creates two classes of Californians – those with the right to marry and those without. Eighteen-thousand same-sex couples that married before voters approved Prop 8 last November find themselves somewhere in the middle. The Supreme Court upheld the legality of their marriages.

Attorney Jenny Pizer is on the legal team that mounted the challenge to Prop 8. She said those couples will be key in the continuing campaign to change public opinion about gay marriage.

Jenny Pizer: As they show through their ordinary, day to day lives that their equality doesn't threaten anyone, but their happiness, their marriages strengthen their families and strengthen society.

Watt: Reverend Eric Lee is the Southland president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King.

Eric Lee: And I can tell you today that if Dr. King were here, that he would be standing on the side of justice and equality for gay and lesbian people.

Eddie Jones: I have a problem with Eric Lee's statement from the SCLC. I do not support same-sex marriage.

Watt: In a barbershop less than a block away, Eddie Jones of the Los Angeles Civil Rights Association explained that marriage is about raising kids. The kids, he said, need a mom and a dad.

Jones: I could not be who I am without my mother's leadership. And I surely couldn't be who I am without my father's leadership. They both had ways of teaching us that was very valuable to our future.

Watt: Jones said by voting yes on Prop 8 last November, Californians said no to same sex-marriage. And no means no.