Sunday, November 2, 2008

Long Beach city council opposes California's Prop. 8


The city council of Long Beach, CA, unanimously opposed Proposition 8, the anti-gay marriage ballot question, at their 19 Aug 2008 meeting. The vote was 6-0, with three absences. The motion to oppose was made by Councilmember Gerrie Schipske, an out Democrat.

The video of the meeting can be viewed at the link below. There are some interesting comments made during the citizens' input section (lots of right-wing disinformation and lots of bigots insisting they don't really want to discriminate). Bonus points if you can spot the obvious closet case who spoke against same-sex marriage.

Councilmember Schipske is eloquent, as always. Vice Mayor Val Lerch spoke heatedly against bigotry, which is interesting because of his gay marriage record. At the council's 01 Jun 2004 meeting at which out Democratic councilmember Dan Baker introduced a resolution to oppose Bush's Federal Marriage Amendment, Mr. Lerch repeatedly spoke just as heatedly about how the resolution was a waste of his time. The Baker resolution died on a 4-4 tie vote; Mr. Lerch was the deciding vote against it. He was also the only vote against a watered-down substitute motion to support "equal protection under the law and to oppose any amendments that deny equal protection"; that motion passed 7-1.

In the archive search box below, either type or copy and paste "40. (08-0842)" ; include the quotation marks. That will get you to the relevant agenda item number for the 19 Aug 2008 meeting. The relevant section of the video is 39 minutes long (from 02:00:12 to 02:39:34). Click here for the archive search box.



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