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Google Challenging Proposition 8
theodp writes "Coming the day after it announced layoffs and office closures, Google's California Supreme Court filing arguing for the overturn of Proposition 8, which asks the Court not to harm its ability to recruit and retain employees, certainly could have been better timed. Google's support of same-sex marriage puts it on the same page with Dan'l Lewin, Microsoft's man in Silicon-Valley, who joined other tech leaders last October to denounce Prop 8 in a full-page newspaper ad. But oddly, Microsoft HR Chief Mike Murray cited religious beliefs for his decision to contribute $100,000 to 'Yes On 8', surprising coming from the guy who had been charged with diversity and sensitivity training during his ten-year Microsoft stint. "
As a gay software engineer, I would be a lot more interested in moving to Massachusetts or Connecticut partially because they allow for same-sex marriage.
"Proposition 8 was a California ballot proposition in the November 4, 2008, general election. It changed the state Constitution to restrict the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples and eliminated same-sex couples' right to marry, thereby overriding portions of the ruling of In re Marriage Cases."
Wikipedia Source
Google's argument can be summarized as such: The law deters gays and lesbians from taking up residence in California, which is where the majority of Google's employees work. Thus the law is detrimental to Google in that its gay/lesbian employees may want to leave and prospective employees who happen to be gay/lesbian will have more hoops to jump through to work for Google.
This is particularly bad timing for such a thing as Google is in the process of laying off workers (though it is a very small number - something like 100) and if they are in a position where they have to layoff employees, why are they even talking about hiring employees? Of course the answer to this is simple - Google hopes to grow and something like this will be pertinent in the future - but some people are very shortsighted and will not recognize this.
It affects lots of things, such as adoption, hospital visits, and survivorship. how'd you like to live with someone for 40 years and lose your house when he dies because you can't automatically inherit the place of residence? There are lots of benefits to marriage that gays are being denied.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I agree. Bump this post up.
Let churches do church stuff. Let the state do state stuff. The two rarely need to meet, and definitely do not need to meet on this topic. Marriage is a religious pact between two people and their beliefs. Civil-union is a legal provided by the state to give any consenting adults right of attorney, inheritance, and other legal protections.
They get hung up on the word marriage.
In reality, marriage under the law and marriage in a religious institution are different things with the same name. However, because many people do both things at once and because they don't distinguish between the two things, they get conflated.
What has struck me as ironic is Christians citing monogamous heterosexual marriage as something ordained by God, when the monogamous part of it was in fact pressed upon the Hebrews and other subjected people of the Roman Empire.
Marriage was first and foremost about kinship ties and property rights in most civilizations, not about procreation.
This law prevents Google from giving same sex partners benefits for the same price. Insuring two unmarried people is far more expensive than two married people.
We are not talking about a law here, we're talking about a constitutional amendment.
The courts have no authority to change a state's constitution.
Learn about Photography Basics.
Apparently CA has two different types of amendment procedures with one having a MUCH lower barrier to pass.
One is simple referendum (and thus just needs 50% of the vote) while the other is a more involved process that requires legislative support.
The court case is going over which type of amendment prop-8 was and thus was the method used to pass it valid.
The court case is going over which type of amendment prop-8 was and thus was the method used to pass it valid.
Prop 8 was introduced as an amendment: it added language to the California state constitution. Amendments require only a simple majority vote to pass.
The other type of constitutional change is a revision: striking language or significantly changing the language in the state constitution. A revision requires a 2/3 majority vote to pass.
Because the California state constitution already has an equal protection clause (the clause which the California Supreme Court used to declare gay marriage legal), the addition of Prop 8 to the constitution would seem to place it at contradiction with itself.
What the opponents are arguing is that for Prop 8 to be valid it would have to be a revision: striking the language in the equal protection clause and adding the language that the banners of gay marriage want.
Convincing 2/3 of Californians to strike the equal protection clause from their constitution is a much more daunting task than getting 50% of them to say, ick, we don't like gay marriage. Ban it please.
Wait, did you just seriously, and with a straight face use a link to "Rapture Ready" to support an argument? RR is NOT a trusted source of information for anyone other than those who are expecting that they are going to vanish from the earth to sit with Jesus while the rest of us fight a massive war, apparently for the entertainment of god and his new raptured buddies.
Oh, but it gets better. That page seems to just draw from a page at traditionalvalues.org, entitled Homosexual Urban Legends, The Series. Now, this charming piece of work is by "The Traditional Values Coalition", which is catagorized by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
Might as well post links to Stormfront.org for "the real truth about blacks and jews".
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.