Zackford Blogs has an excellent recap of today’s televised hearing, and I encourage you to check it out. I was home sick today, and so I was fortunate enough to be able to watch most of it live. For some reason, I had it in my head it started tomorrow…

Some of my own thoughts-

I can’t imagine the judges denying standing to at least one of the parties seeking it. This has come about because at no stage of the court case would the California Governor, nor the State AG defend Prop 8.  If one of them had defended it (and lost) we wouldn’t be here today, because then the issue of standing would be a moot point. I guess the anti gay groups could say that if they lost the case before Walker, and it was appealed, they would still be asking for standing, but I don’t think they would have as much likelihood to get it. As it is, it does appear like there is no one to speak for the people of California who voted to accept Prop 8. Don’t get me wrong- I don’t believe people should ever have the right to vote on the rights of others, but in California they do have that right, and that is why I think the judges will probably grant one of them as having standing.

Still, if it were me, I wouldn’t grant them standing. I buy the argument made against standing, whether or not the people of California have any recourse or not.

Zackford didn’t find the first hour all that interesting:

While the first hour’s debate on standing was dry and probably of little interested, the ensuing hour and a half discussion about gay people was poignant. I encourage everyone to watch or read the transcripts and share with others. This is a discussion that everybody needs to hear.

I thought it was fascinating nonetheless. It demonstrates so beautifully, why the involvement of the courts is so crucial  by pairing down the issues to rules and how they are applied. It also demonstrated how case law comes into the equation, and why it is so critically important. And I appreciated the thoughtfulness (often) of the judges and their questions.

There seemed to be considerable effort put into the issue of the fact that rights were taken away from the gays and lesbians in California . One day they had the right to marry, and then they didn’t.  At times since the Prop 8 win, I have seen this as the central crime against the LGBT movement, but now I’m not so sure. If it were a right granted (by a court) and then removed, or if it was a right they didn’t have but where discrimination was written into the State Constitution, makes little difference. all people, regardless of sex and sexual orientation should be granted equal rights under the Federal Constitution.

I really appreciated the way this was described as discrimination based on sex as well as based on sexual orientation.

There was only one point raised by the defenders of Prop 8, that I believe wasn’t shot down enough, and that was the issue of kids raised in a family with a mother and a father. It was stated several times that kids raised this way are better, and I thought more should have been said to show that wasn’t the case. But maybe the time for those fireworks is in the trial itself.

The other moment that gave me pause was when the judge asked “Just how far do we have to go?” In other words, is this only about California or will this ruling apply to all states. I think that is a big and important question, I just am not sure it should be asked before the full cases are laid out. Perhaps I read too much into the Judge’s question.

But in all moments of the hearing, I was just amazed to hear very smart people on both sides try to do what they could do to make points about this issue, and have a meaningful discourse. I was happy to have the pro-Prop 8 people argue that marriage is all about procreation, and then have those arguing for marriage equality demonstrate that marriage is understood as more than procreation. I guess I loved all the work that they did to lay out the facts and let the facts speak for themselves. I think it is easy sometimes to think that the level of discourse on important issues is at the level of Sara Palin gibberish, where volatile emotional arguments are used in the place of real facts with the intention of drowning out the truth. It was great to see a dialogue that can go far beyond that.