Gay marriage debate left local community divided
The big question before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday wasn’t whether gay marriage should’ve been legal. It's whether the federal government should’ve recognized same sex unions and offered benefits to homosexual couples like their heterosexual counterparts. The purpose of the judicial branch of government was to interpret laws, not have made them.
Proposition 8 or the DOMA Act defined marriage between one man and one woman. This federal law went further in that it restricted the rights of gay couples. Section 3 of DOMA didn’t allow the recognition of same-sex marriages for all federal purposes, which included insurance benefits for government employees, Social Security survivors' benefits, immigration, and the filing of joint tax returns. The outcome of the California Supreme Court’s decision on this issue was to have lasting affects that would’ve shaken the local community, which was just as divided in its opinion as the nation.
People that supported Proposition 8 thought that if the pro-gay side won, Nimocks said what's at stake was whether Americans got the final say about what marriage “was "or whether the Supreme Court was implementing a new definition of marriage upon all 50 states and the four U.S. territories."
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