Today is not only National Freedom To Marry Day and the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, but also the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, more commonly known as the NAACP.Tonight in Los Angeles, the NAACP Image Awards will be held and broadcast live on national television, on Fox.
Today is also the 5th anniversary of the beginning of "Freedom Spring" when Mayor Gavin Newsom started allowing same-sex couples to get married in San Francisco and thousands of couples siezed the opportunity. Those marriages were later annulled by the California Supreme Court, who ruled that the Mayor had overstepped his authority in directing the city clerk to give marriage licences to same-sex couples, but then in May 2008 ruled that those very laws which prevented the Mayor from taking that action legally, were unconstitutional and struck them down effective, June 15, 2008. When Proposition 8 passed on November 4, 2008 it amended the state constitution in an attempt to again ban marriages between same-sex couples. That measure's constitutionality is pending before the Court and will be decided by June 2009.
It's interesting to think about the connections between the shared anniversary of the birth of the nation's greatest President, the birth of the man who formulated the the theory of evolution, the founding of the oldest and most respected civil rights organization and a day to acknowledge legalized state discrimination against same-sex couples who want to marry.
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