A dramatic new chapter in the legal fight over Proposition 8 opens today, with debate over the purpose of marriage, the power of social convention and the rights of gay individuals televised live from federal court for the first time.

SAN FRANCISCO — The federal judge who overturned California’s same-sex marriage ban ruled Thursday that gay marriages can resume starting Aug. 18.

There were bitter foes in Bush v. Gore, but neither Ted Olson nor David Boies hesitated at the chance to work together on overturning Proposition 8, which banned gay marriage in California. Olson didn’t like government meddling in people’s private lives, and Boies had a long background with civil-rights litigation in the South that he […]

Sunday at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Atlanta, Al Sharpton gave a sermon strongly condemning churches support of Prop 8.

By Jesse Washington, National Writer/Race & Ethnicity Gay is the new black, say the protest signs and magazine covers, casting the gay marriage battle as the last frontier of equal rights for all.

From Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Dish: This is from an interview with a very experienced and committed African-American lesbian activist in California: Did anyone come and say, “Hey, we need to do outreach in the African-American community together?” Absolutely not, in fact the message I got from a key person in the No on […]

From theroot.com: The lingering tension between gays and lesbians and the African-American community over the passage of California’s Proposition 8—banning same-sex marriage—isn’t a laughing matter, but it is absurd. It has all the makings of a Tyler Perry movie starring the casts of Big Love and The L Word. Diary of a Mad Black Mormon Lesbian […]

Black voters in California have been blamed for the passage of an anti-gay marriage ban called Proposition 8. Here is yet another rebuttal of that argument, this time from noted poll interpreter Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com: “The notion that Prop 8 passed because of the Obama turnout surge is silly….”

Did Black voters propel California’s gay marriage ban to victory? Many angry opponents of that ban — a ballot measure known as “Proposition 8” — seem to think so.