When the California Supreme Court begins weighing arguments over same-sex marriage ”” again ”” in December, some 18,000 such marriages could hang in the balance. Opponents of such unions also have high stakes, having spent countless hours, and nearly $40 million, to pass Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage and is under review by the court. And the justices could lose out, too; some are already being threatened with being voted out of office if they rule Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.
“This is the whole ballgame,” said Jesse Choper, a professor of law at the University of California, Berkeley. “They earn their salaries in having to decide these things.”
The central issue is whether California voters ”” who have repeatedly used ballot measures to rewrite state law ”” overstepped their bounds by passing Proposition 8, which added 14 words to the California Constitution stating that only male-female marriage would be “valid or recognized.” Opponents of the measure say it amounts to a major revision of the Constitution, not an amendment, and thus would require legislative approval.
Over $1,000,000.00 was contributed by the teachers’ union in California to defeat this measure. Gays et al are targeting businesses who supported it.
“Vulnerable minority,” that delicious phrase for the creation of profitable guilt, simply doesn’t ring true. Homosexuals are hardly a “vulnerable” minority any more. And the bullying that is taking place – see above – is widespread and should allay the whole guilt phenomenon. Somewhere along the line, some court somewhere sometime has to protect the majority against an aggressive minority, for we have seen majorities consistently ridiculed and bullied in this entire matter, and a majority SHOULD matter, it should be dominant.
What the court will do is anybody’s guess, but if I were in California and the court killed the vote on prop 8, I would be absolutely furious. Overriding the majority twice should be too much for a voter’s patience, and blacks and Latinos should be particularly angered.
Moreover, I do wish someone with some real power would challenge the notion that marriage is a civil right. We have said it often here, that marriage properly so-called is the business of religion while civil partnerships are the province of Caesar’s world, and this distinction needs to be made, a distinction that Loving vs Virginia ( Do I have this case right?) did not have to face. Larry
If the justices were to be so foolish as to ignore the wishes of the majority of the voters in this state of ours and overturn the vote, I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for their chances of remaining in office, and I’d be willing to bet that the backlash against the opponents of Proposition 8 would be memorable.
It is interesting that BEFORE Proposition 8 passed on election day, the idea of the legal challenge (revision vs. amendment) was considered by most commentators to be a very weak long shot if Proposition 8 passed (which most did not think would happen). However, since Proposition 8 passed, suddenly many commentators are now backpeddling and declaring that anything is possible.
Larry,
I put myself on the record as you have said. Same sex unions could possibly be called an arrangemnt by court action i. e. civil unions but to have them referred to as “marriages’ is difficult for me to take.
This separation of civil partnerships and marriage is, I think, now widely understood. The perception is actually new, even though we all have known that marriage in the a former world was in fact a tandem of forces, some patently secular, some obviously spiritual ( and sacramental). No one was ever forced to distinguish because the times never demanded such rigor. This is no longer the case.
Is this not a matter that will require the intervention of the federal Supremes who will distinguish for all the limits of the civil and therefore the limits of the state? If we can make such a distinction, could we hope that marriage as a definitive meme, now etiolated by the contradictions radiating from the tension between the civil and the sacred, would actually receive new life, new blood, new credibility? Such an action of distinction seems like one of those defining moments that each new century uses to create its own identity. Larry
Interesting. Why does no one ask if the California Supremes overstepped [i]their[/i] bounds? spt+
What is really at stake, in my opinion, is whether the state has, or doesn’t have, the prerogative of sanctioning certain social arrangements, even by only applying a certain description, such as “marriage”, to one of them.