[courtesy of California Progress Report]

In this week’s Democratic weekly radio address, Assemblymembers Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) and Lloyd Levine (D-Woodland Hills) explain why the California Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision is an important civil rights victory that all Californians can celebrate.

You may listen in English or Spanish or read the transcript below.

Hello, this is Assemblyman Mark Leno.

Last week, the California Supreme Court said that denying marriage licenses to lesbian and gay couples is unconstitutional.

I applaud and strongly support our state’s highest court in their decision supporting equal treatment of every Californian under the law.

In their historic ruling, the Justices underscored what all human beings have in common, regardless of their sexual orientation -- and that is the desire to love another human being in an intimate and committed fashion.

I along with my colleagues have worked to pass marriage equality legislation twice in the pass several years, only to see it vetoed.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Maya Harris
Executive Director
ACLU of Northern California

Today is the day we’ve been working for—a watershed for basic fairness and human dignity. The California Supreme Court has recognized that equality means that everyone must be free to marry the person they love.

Profound social change starts in California, and does not end here. It influences the rest of the nation. Today’s decision means that Californians will extend the franchise of fairness to gay and lesbian couples who enter into the committed, loving relationship we call “marriage.” And this decision will take its rightful historic place alongside those that have formally recognized what we, as Americans, have always aspired to: a more perfect, more egalitarian union of free people, free to choose our destiny, including whom to marry.

Californians consider bans on interracial marriage an embarrassing relic of bigotry—and so does the rest of the country. But in 1948, when the California Supreme Court struck down the state law barring interracial marriage, it blazed a brave new path for California and the nation. That decision changed California, and then it changed America.

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Thomas Gangale

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics: Soapblox California - Front Page]

After getting blocked by two Senators who think money from the California Hospital Association (CHA) is more important that basic human dignity, SB 275 has made it to the Senate Floor. (Btw, the two senators in question have lost their Appropriation Cmte. seats as a result). 

Well, now that the ModSquad has faded to black (hopefully to stay permanently in the Seventies), the bill will likely pass the Senate shortly.  Whether Correa and Calderon have decided whether human decency or corporate lobbying cash is more important is still an open question.