En el año 2000, el Estado de California aprobó en plebiscito una ley que prohibía los matrimonios entre parejas del mismo sexo. Pero poco después esta ley fue derribada por un acuerdo de la Corte Suprema del estado. Ahora, la Propuesta 8 (Proposition 8) estará siendo sometida a votación plebiscitaria. Explicado muy brevemente, lo que se propone es derogar aquella disposición de la Corte y establecer que el matrimonio es legalmente válido solo cuando los contrayentes son de distinto sexo. Es, desde luego, una campaña liderada por la derecha religiosa, muy vinculada al Partido Republicano y su derrotado candidato McCain. La campaña ha sido dura y muchos millones de dólares han sido gastados en el proceso. Las encuestas sugieren una mayoría a favor de la no aprobación de esta Propuesta, pero, en todo caso, el mismo resultado anticipaban las encuestas con motivo del plebiscito del 2000, el cual, sin embargo, fue finalmente contrario al reconocimiento de los derechos de las personas GLBT. Quizá las condiciones hayan cambiado y en esta ocasión California vote por los derechos humanos y la justicia. Ya veremos. Entretanto, muchos miles de parejas del mismo sexo se apresuran buscando formalizar su relación, antes de que pudiera darse la derogatoria del matrimonio homosexual. En todo caso, se teme que, en caso de darse tal derogatoria, es posible que la derecha religiosa busque también anular los matrimonios que hayan sido legalizados. Tal es la historia de persecución y hostigamiento que seguimos viviendo las personas GLBT. Aquí el prestigioso The New York Times nos hace una crónica de ese estado de cosas. Pedimos disculpas por ser este un reportaje en inglés, pero precisamente por ello hemos procurado ofrecer un breve resumen en español.
California Same-Sex Couples Race to Beat Ballot
By JESSE McKINLEY
SAN FRANCISCO — Sharna Fey and Kim Broadbeck have married three times. In 2004, they married in a daze. In 2005, they married on an island. And on Monday, when it really counted under the law, they married in a hurry.
“We’re doing this while we still can,” said Ms. Fey, 44, a life coach who has been with Ms. Broadbeck for 11 years and through two previous same-sex marriage ceremonies, neither recognized as legal. “I mean, trust me, we feel married. But this is a legal response.”
With polls showing the outcome of a ballot measure on Tuesday on outlawing same-sex marriage in California a tossup, couples were not taking any chances on Monday. They showed up early here at City Hall, wearing boutonnieres and blouses and holding hands — and their collective breath.
In West Hollywood, a gay-friendly city in Los Angeles County, John Duran, a city councilman, said he had performed 25 ceremonies since Friday, driving all over Los Angeles County to officiate.
“This is the modern-day version of a shotgun wedding,” he said. “We’re doing as many as we can before tomorrow.”
The rush to the altar was in anticipation of Proposition 8, which would amend the State Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman and end nearly five months of legalized same-sex marriages in the state. The ban, if approved, would take effect Wednesday.
“We’re here in case of what happens tomorrow,” said Michael Levy, who married his partner, Michael Golden, here on Monday. They wore identical tuxedo jackets, ties and beards.
“I’m scared,” Mr. Levy said. “It’s really close.”
Same-sex couples filled the hallway in front of the county clerk’s office here as weddings started at 9 a.m., with dozens of ceremonies scheduled throughout the day and dozens more already booked for Election Day.
Clerks in several other California counties reported a surge in the number of marriage licenses issued, with some offices booked to capacity. San Francisco has issued more than 800 marriage licenses to same-sex couples since Oct. 20 and nearly 5,000 since mid-June.
Elsewhere, couples held ceremonies on beachfronts and in backyards and living rooms.
“We kind of said Proposition 8 was like our version of getting knocked up,” said Benjamin Pither, 28, who married his high school sweetheart, Joseph Greaves, on Sunday at Mr. Greaves’s parents’ house in Santa Rosa. “We both liked the idea of marriage, but we wanted to do it in our own time. But when it looked like Proposition 8 might pass, we realized that we would regret it if we didn’t take the opportunity.”
Some couples traveled from afar to make Monday the big day. Allison and Rose, a lesbian couple from Tampa, Fla., said they had come to San Francisco to marry on the advice of friends who suspect that Florida will pass its own constitutional ban on Tuesday on same-sex marriage. The couple, who said they might relocate if Florida passed its ban, did not want their last names used because of fears that they would face discrimination at home.
“It isn’t like San Francisco,” Rose said.
While defeat of the California ballot measure would probably quell debate — at least for a time — over allowing same-sex unions in the state, it is expected that a victory would lead to a second round of legal wrangling over the validity of the thousands of marriages performed since June, when a State Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriages took effect.
California’s attorney general, Jerry Brown, has said he believes that the marriages will remain valid, but Geoff Kors, the executive director of Equality California, a gay rights group that opposes Proposition 8, said he expected challenges.
“It wouldn’t surprise me that people trying to eliminate constitutional rights would try to annul or divorce people that are married,” said Mr. Kors, who expressed optimism that the ballot measure would fail.
Supporters of the ban say no rights would be infringed by its passage but suggest that the California Supreme Court will “have to deal with the mess that it made” by allowing the marriages in the first place, said Sonja Eddings Brown, a spokeswoman for Protect Marriage, the leading group behind Proposition 8.
In the spring, opponents of same-sex marriage asked the court to stay its decision until the election, but the request was turned down. “They knew Proposition 8 was going to be on the ballot,” Ms. Brown said, “and they decided not to listen to the voice of the people.”
Each side has poured more than $25 million into the fight over Proposition 8, making it one of the most expensive ballot measures ever in a state known for its proclivities for direct democracy. Airwaves across the state have been blanketed in recent weeks with increasingly overheated advertisements, with opponents likening the measure to the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II and supporters suggesting that same-sex marriage would be taught to young schoolchildren.
The most recent Field Poll showed a five-point advantage for opponents of the measure, but backers of Proposition 8 say support for bans on same-sex marriage across the country has been traditionally understated in polls.
In 2000, when California voters approved a law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, a Field Poll just before the election showed that 53 percent of those polled approved the measure. The final tally in favor of the law was 61 percent.
The 2000 law was overturned in May by the State Supreme Court. Hundreds of joyous couples were married on balconies and in atriums throughout San Francisco’s soaring City Hall after the court’s ruling took effect on June 16.
The mood was more subdued Monday, with bureaucracy — “Next, please!” — replacing much of the ebullience of that day. Ms. Fey and Ms. Broadbeck seemed almost to have a touch of same-sex-marriage fatigue. They were among the 4,000 couples that married in San Francisco in 2004, after Mayor Gavin Newsom suddenly ordered the city clerk to marry same-sex couples.
Those marriages were later invalidated by the courts. A year later, Ms. Fey and Ms. Broadbeck married again, in Hawaii, with friends and family in attendance, and “fully seen by those closest to us,” Ms. Fey said. But it was an unofficial ceremony in a state that does not allow same-sex marriage.
So it was that this time around, they had almost forgotten to tie the knot.
“All summer long we were like, ‘Oh yeah, we should do that,’ ” Ms. Fey said. “And then all of the sudden, it was like, ‘Uh oh.’ ”
Paul Ellis, 51, a retail manager in San Francisco, was at City Hall on Monday to witness Mr. Golden and Mr. Levy’s wedding. It was Mr. Ellis’s seventh same-sex marriage in the last five months, he said, attending most of them in the tartan kilt he wore on a muggy Monday, which he regretted.
“You wouldn’t want to wrap six yards of cloth around your hips on a day like this,” he said.
Mr. Ellis had also taken matters into his own hands, getting an online certification as a marriage officiate and presiding over two ceremonies for other gay friends — all ahead of Tuesday’s election.
“At this point,” he said of the ballot measure’s fate, “I think it’s a complete crapshoot.”
Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting from West Hollywood.
The New York Times, 4 de Noviembre de 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/04/us/04marriage.html?_r=2&hp=&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin
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