Yeah, I am pretty upset too being in California’s most liberal county - but if the Yes on 8 people think that 16000 couples are just going to sit calmly and not do anything, they are kidding themselves.

This victory will be shortlived for the haters.

And I could care less for Obama’s win in light of this daily struggle.

So we are now using laws to define biology? If that’s the case, then that is scary. The fact is that this is not about biology, this is about privilege and shown clearly by your use of the word amnesty, as if now same sex couples are those scary undocumented clamoring to be seen as the same when they already are. This is about human rights. Were there not (and still are in many ways) separate but equal laws based on race in this country that were anything but equal. As soon as we start othering one group/one circumstance and mainstreaming another, we are dealing with power and privilege. Punto.

Prop 8 passed in California because the religious right believe homosexuality is a sin. In general Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, and Muslims all identify homosexuality as a sin. The reality is the sum of those communities often make up the majority of the population, in a democracy the majority rules. A Democracies major flaw is that it can not and will not please all groups of people. America provides us with the freedom, as long as Americans have freedom, different interest and conflicts will arise. Both sides need to learn to respect each other and somehow live in harmony.

We need to end the non-profit status of any and all religious institutions that meddle in politics, legislate from the pulpit, tell their congregations for whom and how to vote, push to create laws and change constititions. They are no longer religions, they are big businesses.

According to the IRS rules for tax exempt status “no organization may intervene in political campaigns” and “no part of it’s activity may be to influence legislation.” Clearly the new congress needs to investigate these outright abuses.

Since these mega churches now have so much input into the political process and believe that everyone who believes differently from themselves should not be afforded the same benefits.

At the very least the LDS and the Catholic churches who lead the prop 8 political initiative should loose their tax exempt status. Just think of how quickly we could reduce America’s debt if only these so-called religious businesses paid their fair share of taxes on the billions of dollars they collect each Sabath.

I was once told that gay people can still marry, just not the same sex. How stupid. If the curches want to legislate, then they shouldn’t get the perks associated with the real religions that follow the rules. How realistic!

Elizabeth I understand your pain and frustration when non-profit institutions tell their members how to vote. But where do we draw the line? If the government mandates religious institutions to pay taxes because of their involvement in the political process, shouldn’t that also prevent and stop professors in colleges from speaking about politics freely? I am a Senior at one of the California State Universities and I have had several professors tell the class how they should vote and why. A large portion of their salary come from tax payers, if we regulate non-profit organizations shouldn’t we also regulate public schools?

It’s actually not just a ban on gay marriage. What unsuspecting voters did not realize is that, while on its face it appealed to an anti-gay bias and hoped to pass based on that prejudice alone, it was drawn up in such a way as to prevent second marriages.

That was the result of the heavy lobbying done by the “One Man One Woman Marriage Society,” (”OMOWMS”), which is a kind of underground society formed by a coalition of Catholic and Baptist fundamentalists. It pushed for the amendment to define marriage as between “one” man and “one” woman. The original language included the additional language “at one time,” which would have permitted second marriages and simply prohibited the marriage of one man to two woman (or vice versa) at the same time. But this particular lobby successfully defeated the inclusion of that language, and that is why the only marriage that is permitted under the amendment is that between ONE man and ONE woman.

Second marriages, at least in California, will no longer be recognized by the state, and formerly married individuals who apply for marriage licenses in California will now be turned down. Hopefully Governor Schwarzenegger will not appoint any activist judges who will read beyond the plain language in the amendment and start allowing second marriages. The OMOWMS obviously didn’t want their efforts to become public, as they thought, rightly so, that although most Californians would want to prohibit gay marriage on the basis that God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman, those same Californians want the opportunity to remarry if they get tired of their spouses even though God probably didn’t think that that marriage should be torn asunder by divorce.