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While lawyers and civil rights advocates agree that Prop 8 will (most likely) be upheld when the State Supreme Court makes its decision, no one can say for sure if forced divorces will affect the 18,000+ couples who were legally married. In what could be the biggest debate in all of this is, well, "is." The wording of Prop 8 reads like this: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Kenneth Starr claimed during this month's hearing that the phrase “is recognized,” even in the present tense, would also nullify existing same-sex marriages that happened in the past. But as Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal points out, "Advocates who favor allowing the gay marriages to stand point to a California legal tradition of protecting what are called 'vested rights.' The idea is that if somebody obeyed the law in exercising a right, any new law must be extremely clear in its intent to take away that right." That is to say, if you want a law to work retroactively, said law must be clear about it; the gay marriage ban was not. (Also for comprehensive coverage about civil marriage equality in California, check out Stop8.org.)
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Can you imagine the logistics of unwinding 18,000 marriages?
Expect that the couples who married will get grandfathered in, if it comes to that...
This whole thing is a conspiracy on the part of divorce lawyers.
Is it Kenneth Starr's life work to make sure that every dollar ever earned by the entire population of the world throughout the history of mankind be spent on lawyers? He practically bankrupted Slick Willy. Now he wants 18,000 people to get a divorce? This is going to get expensive, and as always not for Kenny. Please get a prostate cancer the size of a water mellon, now, please, for the sake of humanity.
As far as I'm concerned, I hope the court has the integrity to dissolve the marriages if they truly believe that Californians have the right to pass amendments like 8.
Allowing the marriages to continue is the ultimate in cowardly fence sitting and would fully expose the court as being self serving. By upholding the licenses and and 8 at the same time, the court can conveniently say that no one should be pissed enough to vote against them on retention day - which is in 2010 for George, I believe.
If the marriages are tossed, there ought to be another surge of energy behind a repeal and that surge is going to be necessary to push the 5% needed to turn this around. Keeping 18,000 couples secure also keeps them invisible.
I am one of the people in those 18k and I was also married in 2004 and I hope the court throws my marriage out - again. It makes me sick to think that might not happen. Unlike many heterosexual supremacists, I don't feel comfortable having a privilege that is withheld from a minorty group. We may divorce if the court won't do it for us.
I hear what you're saying, but I just don't buy it. This is just a stumbling block on the eventual path to marriage equality. The system won't be able to sustain having this weird segment of valid marriages that is closed off like that. Yes8's are painted into a corner here and are striking back the only way they can, but the dam won't hold, not like this.
Forcibly divorcing 18,000 couples? Yeah, right. The "Cultural Revolution" parallels would make that a world-class controversy, and if successful would be a worldwide addition to every teenager's "World History" book and its huge page would endure an endless edit war on Wikipedia. Not to mention the legalisms that would ensue. It would be an absurdly nuclear outcome.
But you can't just dissolve 18,000 marriages with the stroke of a pen. The property rights that the partners thought they were being guaranteed by a legal marriage have to be respected. A marriage is a legal contract and contracts cannot be broken by the government: see AIG.
Way to stretch it. If you RTFA, the only place the word 'divorce' appears is in the headline. Nullification, aka "never happened". No divorce necessary.
Unless those contracts apply to homosexuals, I would bet.
If the court honestly believes THIS YEAR that domestic partnerships are acceptable (even though they weren't last year) then couples that have property issues should sign up for them.
If the court actually believes that it is within the people's power to indicate which populations are eligible for particular privileges, then they should dissolve. The last thing I want to be is an exception. I don't want a fucking asterisk next to my name like some fucking leper.
It is all a conspiracy of we lawyers.
You don't need a lawyer to file for divorce.
Well that all depends on who you married doesn't it?
In regard to the 18,000 marriages - particularly to mine - a voluntary dissolution would not require legal assistance.
A voluntary dissolution doesn't work if you've got kids, money, property, pensions, a favorite plant etc. These things tend to gum up the works a little.
If the marriages are not upheld I imagine that the 18,000 couples will be offered the chance to "downgrade" to Registered Domestic Partners (if they aren't already). That union will deal with the kids, money, pensions, property, etc. They should issue refunds for the license fees, too.