Proposition 8 "fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples..."
I am likely a minority voice on HN on this topic and with so many strong feelings about this I will likely be down-voted for these arguments, but in the spirit of bringing out another side to the debate so that a full discussion can happen, I'd like to bring up a few thoughts against the court-ruling.<p>I rarely hear about how state-approved same-sex marriage will impact freedom of religion. Personal feelings aside, religous groups should have the freedom to practice their religion according to their conscience. They each have a right to preach their interpretation of right and wrong, and shouldn't be forced into the current policially correct view. <p>For example, I could see a pastor or rabbi or other religous leader feeling uncomfortable about marrying 2 people of the same sex, and then being sued for a civil rights violation with the full force of the state to back up the couple's lawsuit.<p>Another example that comes to mind is religous colleges that offer married student housing being forced to let a same-sex couple live in the housing; in this situation the school could be sued for discrimination and potentially lose tax-exempt status unless they comply.<p>These 2 examples are compelling to me because they are realistic scenarios post-today's ruling and they represent a power-grab by the government over a religion's conscience-driven decisions about what is right and wrong. We shouldn't hand over these religious decisions to bureaucrats.<p>It seems that by officially sanctioning same-sex marriage, we are heading towards a collision course between church and state, which is troubling from a religious-freedom perspective. In an ideal world, marriage wouldn't be a state-driven issue at all, but left to the religions themselves to define. Obviously this isn't an option; at the very least we should be careful about how much more power we want to give the government about our individual conscience-driven religous choices.
What makes Hacker News cool is that the link is to the actual ruling, which is far more interesting than the articles about this I've seen so far. If you just glanced at the headline, I suggest you dig in...
Anyone seeing 500 errors - S3 has all but died in the last few minutes. We are working with them to get things back up and running.<p>Sorry for the inconvenience.<p><a href="http://status.aws.amazon.com/" rel="nofollow">http://status.aws.amazon.com/</a>
I don't get scribd. Why wouldn't you link to the government website hosting this PDF or to a press report conveying this information? My eyes are bleeding from all the ads...