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Prison inmates[/caption]Editor---"Inmates have the same legal right to marry as those who are not inmates," said Bill Sessa, a spokesman for the state corrections department.
This announcement observes California inmates are eligible to marry non-incarcerated partners of the same sex, according to aCalifornia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation memo which outlines the conditions. On the other hand, there are limitations as well. A memo addresses those limitations follow the US Supreme Court's having declared Proposition 8 unconstitutional, which prohibited gay marriage.
Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, presented a memo outlining the law and the legal right to marry a person of the same sex. But in California there had been a serious effort to undercut the right for couples both inside and outside of prison to marry.
The memo cites the law and specifies that inmates are entitled to the same privileges but inmates are not entitled to marry while inside prison another inmate of the same sex.
Same sex marriage has been a controversial subject in the normal population. How will it fair in prisons where men without women sometimes resort to sex with each other, even though outside of prison they have heterosexual lives? What might be the reasons in presenting limitations as observed in the memo? Likely one of those reasons may have something to do with certain prison tenure that can influence sexual choice.
The United States Supreme Court has determined prisoners to have a constitutional right to marry, however the law also states prison officials can impose discretion and can even deny an inmate the right to marry.
