On October 24, 2008, Apple Inc. announced via their website:
Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.
Jessica Garrison, Cara Mia DiMassa and Nancy Vogel report today for The LA Times, “A measure to once again ban gay marriage in California was passed by voters in Tuesday’s election, throwing into doubt the unions of an estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who wed during the last 4 1/2 months.”
“Elsewhere in the country, two other gay-marriage bans, in Florida and Arizona, also won. In both states, laws already defined marriage as a heterosexual institution. But backers pushed to amend the state constitutions, saying that doing so would protect the institution from legal challenges,” Garrison, DiMassa and Vogel report. “Proposition 8 was the most expensive proposition on any ballot in the nation this year, with more than $74 million spent by both sides.”
“Most of the state’s highest-profile political leaders — including both U.S. senators and the mayors of San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles — along with the editorial pages of most major newspapers, opposed the measure. PG&E, Apple and other companies contributed money to fight the proposition, and the heads of Silicon Valley companies including Google and Yahoo took out a newspaper ad opposing it,” Garrison, DiMassa and Vogel report. “On the other side were an array of conservative organizations, including the Knights of Columbus, Focus on the Family and the American Family Assn., along with tens of thousands of small donors, including many who responded to urging from Mormon, Catholic and evangelical clergy.
Full article here.
The “NO on Prop 8″ group has so far refused to concede and issued the following statement:
Roughly 400,000 votes separate yes from no on Prop 8 — out of 10 million votes tallied. Based on turnout estimates reported yesterday, we expect that there are more than 3 million and possibly as many as 4 million absentee and provisional ballots yet to be counted. Given that fundamental rights are at stake, we must wait to hear from the Secretary of State tomorrow about how many votes are yet to be counted as well as where they are from.
It is clearly a very close election and we monitored the results all evening and this morning. As of this point, the election is too close to call.
Because Prop 8 involves the sensitive matter of individual rights, we believe it is important to wait until we receive further information about the outcome.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention for the heads up.]
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