Crowds line up to get into Prop. 8 hearing
SAN FRANCISCO — Scores of people lined up this morning outside the California Supreme Court building in San Francisco, hoping for a seat in the chambers as the justices hear arguments on whether the voter-approved state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages should be overturned.
Some people arrived outside the building on McAllister Street at the Civic Center at 4:50 a.m., more than four hours before the arguments began at 9 a.m. The crowd grew as the hearing approached.
Motorists honked their horns, mostly in support of those who want the marriage ban overturned.
First in line was Sara Taylor of Novato, 54, an attorney who married her lesbian partner last June after the court ruled that same-sex marriages were constitutional – a decision that voters overturned five months later in approving Proposition 8.
“This court made the bold decision in the first place declaring that homosexuals have the right to marry,” Taylor said. “For me, it’s a gift to be sitting in front of them.”
On the other side of the issue was Jack Warner, a 60-year-old printer who traveled from Los Angeles for the arguments.
Holding a banner that read, “The Bible says the wages of sin is death,” Warner said he was standing outside the court because, “I want to give our side, God’s side.”
Another Prop. 8 supporter, Thomas Koors, a 63-year-old self-employed window and gutter cleaner from Novato, said he had spent the night in his Subaru near the courthouse and was there to “uphold democracy.”
“If we’re going to have democracy, we have to abide by the will of the majority of the voters, whether we like it or not,” said Koors, who waved an American flag and held a sign that read, “In God we trust.”
The Rev. Amy Morgenstern, 40, who is in a same-sex marriage and is a Unitarian Universalist minister at a Palo Alto church, countered, “It’s just crazy to think that majority rule should be able to take away a fundamental right.”
By 8:15, the line waiting to get into the courthouse took up two-thirds of the block. Others were gathering in Civic Center Plaza, where the three hours of arguments on the legality of Prop. 8 were being televised on a JumboTron set up directly across from City Hall. See
Crowds line up to get into Prop. 8 hearing * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Original source : http://gay_blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/crowds-line-u…
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