Gay-Marriage, California--Great! Not So in Sudan--it's a Crime!

Proponents are hailing this as a day that equality and justice have been served and all people, no matter who they are, can enjoy the sanctity of marriage.

Even Governor Schwarzenegger was glad for the decision and remarked that it was an “important step toward equality and freedom.”

The judge’s decision came after a lawsuit by two gay couples prompted him to reconsider a ban that voters narrowly passed by a 52 percent margin in 2008. Proposition 8 was voted on in the Nov. 2008 election and passed, safeguarding the sanctity of marriage between heterosexual couples only, regardless that just five months earlier the state Supreme Court upheld same-sex marriage as legal.

But the judge forewarned advocates not to run out and buy wedding rings just yet because he has to allow time for the appeals process. Judge Walker has yet to decide if his ruling should be suspended while all those who are in opposition of his ruling exhaust the appeals process.

It has long been stated by all those opposed to same sex marriage that traditional marriage between a man and a woman should be the only marriage allowed between couples to proliferate future generations through conception.

But Judge Walker stated that constitutionally the ban was unfair because it did not recognize the equality of all people, as was written by our ancestors centuries ago. He even stated in his ruling, which was 136 pages long, that Proposition 8 did nothing more than intimate heterosexual couples were “superior” to gay couples, which, again, was unconstitutional on the basis of equality.

And if after reading all that has been written about this landmark decision and there are those people who are still opposed, simply be glad that America is a country at least open minded enough to hear such cases and defend the rights of men and women on the grounds of equality.

In Sudan, the largest country in Africa and predominantly Muslim, a group of young men were publicly flogged today after being arrested for dressing up in women’s attire and wearing make-up. 

A group of 19 men were convicted of the crime for breaking “strict public morality codes.” The young men were at a party when police arrested them for dancing about in a “womanly fashion” and in womanly attire.

After the court found them guilty they were sentenced to 30 lashes each, which was carried out immediately, in public, in front of hundreds of onlookers, adding to their humiliation.

Salva Kiir, President of Sudan stated, “It [homosexuality] is not in our character - it is not there and if anybody wants to import it to Sudan it will always be condemned by everybody”
In this part of the world, Northern Sudan, homosexuality is illegal.