As much as it depresses me to say this, I certainly agree with the ruling of the California Supreme Court that Proposition 8 was a legal proposition under CA law. I wish that the court had had the power to strike down Prop. 8 and return California to those ever so brief times of marriage equality, but by following proper judicial protocol and ruling on the case on its specific merits (whether the subject matter qualified as a proposition), not on the moral feelings of the court.
Seems to me this ruling might even help the marriage equality movement in the long run, as some charges of morality-based judicial activism may no longer hold water...
For those of you who, for some reason, have the desire to read any or all of the decision in its entirety, the document is here
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3 comments:
I agree. I wish that we could rewind the clocks and strike dowm prop 8 on the day that we voted to pass it, but unfortunately based on the voting system in California, that is how we voted.
I vehemently oppose the passage of prop 8, because I think that everyone has the the right to equality. But we can't just re write our voting system so as to pass a certain proposition. Imagine if prop 8 didn't pass and anti-gay rights activists reorganized the voting system to accomadate themselves? Civilians would be incredibly angry, and rightfully so.
As much as I hate this new law, its law now. That's how we voted. I'll pray for it to be overturned in 2012.
I always feel so odd when I hear about the passage of Prop 8. It always seems a if I'm reading a chapter out of the 20th century Civil Rights Movement from the history textbook. I'm sure that one day, we'll look back at all of this and it'll look ridiculous as to how long it took for same-sex marriage to be legalized. Hopefully this "day" will be sooner, rather than later. Yet, as Rachel states, the voted law is the written law; we can't just tweak it to fit our wants. If we were even able to do this, it would only show that the people supporting the opposite argument of the issue could do the same.
I have heard a lot of arguments over this controversial topic on the Internet and, as always about these things, I have mixed feelings.
It seems to me that the whole debate appears to be over the definition of the word "marriage." The Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, Ronald M. George, mentioned in the opinion that civil unions still gives same-sex couples the ability to for a 6-to-1 majority, noted that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions. Such unions, the opinion said, gives those couples the ability to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage." Obviously, that's not enough. Discrimination is discrimination whether or not two things are supposedly equal, yet denote a significant difference in the definition of the term.
One of the things that I found interesting was that the decision was 6-1 compared to the 4-3 ruling last year. Perhaps it was the fact that judges were less willing to exercise judicial activism when the population voted a second time to "ban" gay marriage. In fact, the word "ban" gets me slightly infuriated. Going to what I say above, how can you "ban" gay marriage, yet civil unions still exists when the two is supposed to carry the same weight in the eyes of the law? If butter was banned, could you still use I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!? If so, why? Even when the two serve the same purpose (for the sake of this terrible analogy, assume that butter and I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!)? This doesn't make any sense. I'll 18 this year and I guess I'll have to look for to this seemingly eternal tug of war for the near future whenever it's election day. Oh joy.
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