Two on the Proposition 8 decision. First, a "quick and easy summary", written in plain English, about the basis of the decision. It's probably the simplest explanation I've seen, good for passing on to people who don't know much about the issue.

For more detailed analysis, including lots of great quotes, I direct you to this Open Left article, "The Facts vs. The Fears", goes into a lot more detail about how Judge Walker used findings of fact to make his decisions: the fact that children do perfectly well with same-sex parents, the fact that gay people are oppressed in our society, the fact that legal marriage has nothing to do with promoting procreation. The plaintiffs won because they proved these facts; the proponents lost because they proved no facts whatsoever. They appealed to emotion rather than logic, and while emotion can win elections, it doesn't usually win court cases.

But win an election, they did, and the article draws a great comparison between the court decision and a report on why Proposition 8 passed in the first place. I haven't read that whole report yet, but the upshot, appears to be that Prop 8 won because its advocates made a strong appeal to fear in the final weeks of the campaign, thereby peeling away moderates who might otherwise have voted against it. All the snippets I've read are fascinating, so I do want to sit down and read it all eventually.

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