As I report in today’s article, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco has set a trial date for the federal constitutional challenge to Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage.

He also rejected motions to intervene from a trio of gay-rights groups – the Our Family Coalition, Lavender Seniors and Parents, Families, & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) – represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, as well as from the conservative Campaign for California Families.

And in arguing for and against both, attorneys again highlighted some of the tactical rifts that have formed on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate.

An attorney for the Campaign for California Families argued that Prop. 8’s proponents, who’ve already successfully intervened as proponents in this case (as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and various state and county defendants basically have declined to defend the measure’s constitutionality), may generally share CCF’s opposition to same-sex marriage but are making too many concessions in trying to defend the ban.

Stipulating, or leaving room for a future stipulation, that gays and lesbians form committed relationships, contribute to society just as heterosexuals do, don’t suffer from a psychological illness or disorder, and shouldn’t be encouraged to try to change their sexual orientations are examples of how the proponents are ceding too much ground, she said, and could compromise CCF’s efforts not only to keep marriage exclusively heterosexual but also to repeal existing domestic partnership laws granting certain marriage-like rights to same-sex couples.

But a lawyer for Prop. 8’s proponents urged Walker to deny CCF’s motion to intervene, saying doing so would cause “experts to multiply like locusts” and bog down the case’s trial in “battles that can’t be won.”

On the other side, an ACLU attorney argued his coalition of clients should be allowed to intervene because of the broad range of detailed experience their members have with discrimination and the desire to marry.

But former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, representing the case’s plaintiffs – specific couples denied the right to marry – said that although he respects the coalition’s legal counsel and values their advice and support, letting them intervene could dilute his clients’ control of their legal strategy while complicating and slowing the case’s progress. In a recent brief, he’d noted that the Our Family Coalition had argued against this lawsuit in the first place, calling it a risky and premature gambit and preferring to pursue a new ballot measure to repeal Prop. 8.

A new poll finds support for same-sex marriage in California evenly split, and finds a ballot measure to overturn Proposition 8’s constitution ban would have a slight advantage in 2012 over 2010.

When asked, “Do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose allowing same-sex couples to be legally married,” 47 percent say favor and 48 percent say oppose, according to the poll commissioned by a coalition of pro-same-sex-marriage groups. Support for any given ballot measure depends on the specific language of that measure, the survey found; for example, results show support increases if the language specifically includes a provision that says no clergy will be required to perform a service that goes against their faith.

Modeling turnout scenarios for 2010 and 2012 show a small advantage for same-sex marriage supporters in a 2012 electorate, based on a considerably higher turnout expected in 2012 due to the Presidential election. But the survey notes the added voters drawn to a presidential vote are divided in their views on same-sex marriage: younger voters tend to support it, but older white, black and Latino religious voters would somewhat cancel them out. Overall, the survey projects same-sex marriage supporters would have a 1- to 2-percentage point advantage in 2012 over 2010.

Of course, that also could be influenced by other ballot measures that could affect 2010’s voter turnout and composition, as well as by top-of-the-ticket concerns: The Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 2010 is likely to be a same-sex marriage advocate, while it’s unclear what stance President Barack Obama would take during his presumed 2012 re-election campaign.

The poll, conducted by Goodwin Simon Victoria Research and David Binder Research, surveyed 1,794 California voters – 1,000 randomly selected voters who took part in last November’s election or have registered since then, plus oversamples with blacks, Latinos, Asian/Pacific Islanders and union members – between May 8 and May 15. Coalition members said they chose to do the survey before the Supreme Court issued its May 26 ruling to uphold Proposition 8 so that the results would reflect a “resting pulse” of the electorate, free of emotions riled by the ruling.

More on what it means to the same-sex marriage advocates, after the jump…
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Tuesday’s California Supreme Court decision upholding Proposition 8, the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, continues to resonate through this weekend.

Peace Lutheran Church (at 3201 Camino Tassajara in Danville) in partnership with the Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations and California Faith for Equality will host an interfaith gathering at 7 p.m. Friday as an opportunity “for GLBTQ people, friends and allies to express our collective grief and anger, and then through prayer and healing ritual begin to transform our pain to hopeful determination, re-committing ourselves to the work that lies ahead.”

Although the event isn’t about the Supreme Court ruling per se, it’s sure to be a top topic of conversation as the National Center for Lesbian Rights – which had argued on behalf of plaintiffs seeking to overturn Proposition 8 – holds a fundraiser to mark its 32nd anniversary at 8 p.m. Saturday in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 700 Howard St. This is a costly one, with tickets ranging from $90 to $1,500; RSVP through NCLR’s Web site.

Of course, the biggest to-do this weekend will be the “Meet in the Middle 4 Equality” march and rally Saturday in Fresno, at which activists from all over the state will gather; Bay Area folks will be riding the “Equality Train” – a.k.a. Amtrak – or doing rideshares or hopping buses to get there.

If anyone knows of any other pro- or anti-Proposition 8 events this weekend, please share them in the comments section.

Lots of quotable quotes from near and far on today’s California Supreme Court ruling upholding the validity of Proposition 8, the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, but allowing last year’s 18,000 same-sex marriages to stand.

Oakland City Attorney John Russo:

“The truth is, the anti-marriage crowd is fighting a cause that is already lost. The arc of history bends toward justice and we will see justice for same sex couples in California and in the nation. It may not be as soon as we want – progress in civil rights never is. But despite this ruling, we will continue to fight for equality under the law for all Californians, and we will achieve it.”

Alliance Defense Fund Senior Legal Counsel Austin Nimocks:

“In America, we respect the results of fair elections. The California Supreme Court arrived at the only correct conclusion available: the people of California have a fundamental right to amend their own constitution. This is the second time California has voted to protect marriage. Once again, when marriage goes before the voters, they affirm that marriage means one man and one woman. All 30 states that have voted on whether to affirm marriage as one man and one woman in their state constitutions have done so.

“By allowing the previously-issued same-sex ‘marriage’ licenses to remain valid, the court is perpetuating the problem that it itself created. And it’s doing this despite the clear vote of the people that marriage means one man and one woman and that anything outside of that is not marriage.”

Tons more, after the jump…
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Equality California is rolling out a big grassroots organizing and media campaign called “Win Marriage Back: Make it Real!” aimed at moving public opinion toward acceptance of same-sex marriage.

The first television ads, featuring LGBT couples talking about why marriage matters to them, will hit the airwaves Monday; EQCA executive director Geoff Kors told reporters on a conference call just now that it’s a “significant” statewide ad buy, though he wouldn’t give specific dollar amounts and markets lest he tip the campaign’s hand to same-sex marriage opponents.

But it’s not all about ads. EQCA marriage director Marc Solomon said that in the next 100 days, his group intends to deploy 25 full-time field organizers across California to provide support to thousands of grass-roots activists conducting a door-knocking public education campaign; they’re looking to train 100,000 “equality ambassadors” to spread the word.

And EQCA coalition coordinator Andrea Shorter said they intend to identify and recruit a coalition of at least 1,000 clergy members to talk with their congregations and peers about marriage equality.

“We’re not preaching to the choir – we want to have a broad-based representation of all faith traditions,” she said, not just the progressive “welcoming congregations” already on board with same-sex marriage. They’ll be looking among Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and, yes, even Mormons for clergy and congregants “who are standing up to what they’ve been told about marriage equality and are saying, ‘No.’”

More details, after the jump…
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My story on this morning’s three hours of arguments to the California Supreme Court should be hitting the site imminently, but while it’s being edited, a few less-germaine-yet-colorful observations:

1.) Kenneth Starr was wearing a pink tie. Coincidence or stagecraft?
2.) Several of us wondered what Starr and attorney Gloria Allred were laughing and chatting about before the arguments began — how best to get and stay in front of a television camera?
3.) The court heard these arguments one day after its 159th anniversary.
4.) People began lining up for the courtroom’s few available public seats as early as 4 a.m.; three sets of 20 cycled through, each listening to an hour of the arguments.
5.) The state constitution says the court’s clerk can withhold the justices’ pay if they don’t issue a ruling within 90 days; he said that’s never been a problem.

And from outside the courtroom, some of the more imaginative or incendiary signs people held aloft:

As expected, I’ve received a lot of phone messages and e-mails about the story I had in Sunday’s editions about this week’s California Supreme Court arguments over Proposition 8. Sorry for the delayed response; I was out of the office on unpaid furlough yesterday, so chalk my silence up to the newspaper industry’s slow death-spiral. And while I don’t have time today to call or write back to each individual commenter, I thought I should address it collectively here.

First, a reiteration of something I noted in the article. I called and/or e-mailed more than a dozen East Bay donors to, or former public supporters of, Proposition 8; none would consent to be interviewed for this story. I also gave the Yes on 8 campaign more than a week to find me such a person in Alameda or Contra Costa counties; they also couldn’t find anyone to go on the record with me. I summarized the Yes on 8 side’s arguments based on the briefs so as not to leave that side unrepresented.

To those of you who saw fit to send me e-mails or leave me voice messages on your personal views, or the Bible’s views, about the morality of homosexuality: I don’t care. That is, you’re entitled to your opinion, but that’s not what this debate is about. The Bible is not the controlling legal foundation of this state; the California Constitution is, and this case is about how and when we make changes to that document.

One woman said she voted for Proposition 8 not because she has anything against gay people or same-sex marriage, but because she feared what allowing same-sex marriage would mean for public schools and churches. I’m not sure I understand that argument – you don’t have a problem with it, but you believe children must be shielded from it? As I blogged last year, public schools teach the law of the land; if the law of the land says gay people have the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples, that’s what schools will teach (assuming they teach anything at all about any kind of marriage). As for churches, there’s no indication they’d be compelled to solemnize same-sex marriages any more than a Catholic church is currently required to hold a wedding Mass for a Jewish couple. Churches always have had choice in the rites they perform; that wasn’t going to change.

If you wrote or voice-mailed me with concerns about when the majority does and doesn’t rule, or about the judiciary’s role in interpreting constitutional rights – congratulations, you get what this week’s case is all about.

And to all of you, thanks for taking the time to read and comment on my work.

California’s progressive, grassroots Courage Campaign, still incensed that Barack Obama invited Rick Warren – a renowned author and the pastor of Orange County’s Saddleback Church, as well as a strong, public supporter of Proposition 8’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage – to deliver an invocation at tomorrow’s inauguration, renewed its challenge today to meet Warren for a debate in February or March about marriage equality.

“There should’ve been more thought placed in the choosing of Rev. Warren for the invocation,” Rev. Eric Lee, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference of Greater Los Angeles, told reporters on a teleconference this morning, citing Warren’s comparison of gay and lesbian relationships with pedophilia and incest. “As clergy we need to be compassionate, we need to be tolerant, we need to be respectful of all things and all people, and the comments Rev. Warren made were not respectful, they were dehumanizing.”

“No faith or religion has the right to forcibly impose their theology,” said Lee, adding marriage shouldn’t be a theological discussion “but rather a civil, institutional discussion.”

But while Warren’s selection for the invocation was “a mistake,” it’s a done deal, Courage Campaign founder and director Rick Jacobs said. Given that, Warren should now follow Obama’s instruction that “we all talk to each other” about the issues that divide us.

The Courage Campaign delivered an invitation and 25,000 campaign members’ signatures to Warren’s church on Christmas eve, and Lee followed up with a Jan. 13 letter. According to an Orange County Register article published Friday, a “spokeswoman for Warren said that the Saddleback pastor is focused on President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, in which he will deliver the invocation, and is not making any comments prior to it.”

So Jacobs and Lee today demanded Warren answer their invitation as soon as Wednesday, right after the inauguration.

And if he doesn’t answer this call to debate, Jacobs said, he’ll then have to answer whether he’s “serious about dialogue or is he just interested in making his point.”

Just as more than 50 labor organizations did yesterday, a coalition of religious groups today unveiled their friend-of-the-court brief urging the California Supreme Court to invalidate Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban written into the California Constitution by voters in November’s election.

This latest brief was filed on behalf of the California Council of Churches, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ, two Episcopal Bishops (of California and Los Angeles), the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations and the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California, and the Northern and Southern California Nevada Conferences of the United Church of Christ.

“Not even the electorate can take away these sacrosanct rights on a whim,” the religious groups’ brief says. “At the very least, article XVIII of the California Constitution requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature, or a constitutional convention, before a historically disfavored minority may be deprived of equal protection of the laws with regards to ‘inalienable’ rights. Additionally, as the Attorney General asserts, an initiative that targets constitutionally ‘inalienable’ rights must survive strict scrutiny if those rights are to amount to anything. This Proposition 8 cannot do.”

The groups say they, their member congregations and parishioners depend on article XVIII “to ensure that the California Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection for religious minorities cannot be taken away without a deliberative process of the utmost care possible in a representative democracy. If Proposition 8 is upheld, however, that assurance will disappear – for, just as surely as same-sex couples could be deprived of equal protection by a simple majority vote, so too could religious minorities be deprived of equal protection – a terrible irony in a nation founded by people who emigrated to escape religious persecution.”

Conservative public-interest law firm Liberty Counsel will file a brief tomorrow urging the court not to invalidate Proposition 8, arguing that doing so would devastate the rights of those who voted for the ballot measure.

“The Constitution cannot overrule itself,” Liberty Counsel founder Mat Staver said in a news release today. “When the people passed Proposition 8, it became part of the state constitution and no judge, irrespective of how high or mighty, may stand above the rule of law. After the passage of Proposition 8, only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. In the same way that the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished a slaveholder’s title and the Prohibition Amendment divested the right to sell liquor, Proposition 8 makes same-sex marriage licenses invisible and void.”

Marriage Equality USA today posted the first of three reports based on community forums and surveys they’ve been conducting since Proposition 8 — which changed the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage — was approved by voters in November.

“We received input from community forums hosted across California and over 3,100 individuals across the United States and in 13 foreign countries,” said MEUSA Police Director Pamela Brown. “This report is the first of three to be issued in the month of January that will share the ‘collective wisdom’ gathered by summarizing from this grassroots input.”

Among the findings, according to the group’s news release:

The next report, scheduled for release next Monday, “will share stories of discrimination and harm that resulted from California’s Prop 8 campaign and mirror similar experiences of our LGBTI community and straight allies who have faced similar ballot initiative campaigns,” the release says. “Finally, our third report to be issued later in January will provide MEUSA’s plan for the future on how to win support for marriage equality in all 50 states.”