California Supreme Court; right decision, but it still hurts
IronyLet me preface this by saying that I couldn’t be more favor of same sex couples having equal rights and protections under the law as anyone else. Actually, it’s my view that no government, be it state or national, should be in the business of marriage at all; civil partnerships, certainly, but for me, marriage should be a religious sacrament, for churches to decide on for themselves, but be separate from any legal meaning.
This all being the case, it seems to me that yesterday’s decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold proposition eight was the right one, even if a large part of me is disappointed by the outcome. I’m sure that, should the decision have gone the other way, I and a decent sized part of the population of California (not to mention equal rights campaigners across the country) would have been more than satisfied and been able to turn a blind eye, to a certain extent, to the use of the court’s power.
As it is, these seem to be the facts. At the end of last year a proposition, an angry, bigoted, wrong, spiteful proposition, was passed by a majority by the California electorate. The court was asked to consider whether the proposition impinged on the state’s equal rights and privacy law, and as to whether it was a major Amendment to the state constitution as opposed to a revision. An Amendment would have required a two thirds majority, which prop eight did not manage. In all cases, the court ruled that the proposition was constitutional. It seems as if they had no choice; if a court overturns a democratic decision, then where would that lead? I might not agree with what the people have decided, but that only makes it my job (and others) to convince the electorate of my position. It’s not for the court to do so.
However, the ruling didn’t stop there. Whilst ruling that prop eight was able to deny same sex couples the right to use the word ‘marriage’ to designate their relationship, it upheld all of its previous decisions about the rights of couples to form domestic partnerships and civil unions. Essentially, then, same sex couples are allowed to get married, but just not call it a marriage. Obviously, this means that there is still a ways to go, but it does make it more difficult for anti same sex campaigners to remove these provisions, as they will have to spell it out explicitly in any future proposition that that is what they want to do.
Furthermore, the court ruled that all eighteen thousand or so marriages that occurred whilst they were legal should stand. In and of itself, this is good news; that’s an awful lot of living examples of how gay marriage is not going to destroy society, something that can only be a good thing in helping to sway people’s opinions.
So the real battle comes will come in 2010, when there is sure to be some sort of proposition designed to reverse prop eight. This time, both sides will be ready, and it’ll be a tough fight. It does seem as if the ebb of history is to those wanting equal rights, so we can but hope.
