The California Supreme Court ruled the only way I think it could and still maintain credibility. As it says on Volokh, it’s not really about gay marriage, but about whether the people have a right to alter their own constitution in ways the political elite would prefer they not.
While I would be in favor of gay marriage, passed by the legislature, I am not in favor of it being done through judicial fiat. The people of California have spoken. They do not want gay marriage. For gay marriage activists, that means changing hearts and minds, which is a hard thing to do, and takes a long time. By pushing this issue through the courts, without building up a real public consensus first, they’ve put their cause back decades. It’s a lesson that should not be lost on Second Amendment activists, but in general, I think we’ve done very well in building up a public consensus. Certainly much better than the gay marriage activists.
As a 2nd Amendment Activist, and Massachusetts resident, I wonder how many Gay activists will be told what I’ve been told.
“Move to a free state!”
Telling Gays to leave San Francisco and Berkley for Freedom! Wow the times!
I guess that means we have to keep Robb off-camera.
:)
I agree with you – only way the court could rule once it was explicitly in the constitution. That said, it’s absolutely nuts that they can modify their constitution with a simple majority! Why bother with a constitution if it’s as easy to change as legislature?
I also doubt it will take decades for gay marriage to be legalized again in California. They only need to persuade 2% of voters to get the constitution rewritten in the opposite direction. I expect Prop. 8 to be reversed within a few years.
If I may indulge your patience with my admittedly layman’s analysis, I think there is a quantum difference in the history and tradition of the two different “rights,” that overwhelmingly affect their acceptability to the general citizenry. Even the most ignorant among us has heard of the farmer-militiamen who bore arms against the government tyrants to win our freedom and independence from Britain. The tradition of the American citizen-soldier is long and honorable, even legendary. Consequently, the general public views the idea of armed self-defense and an armed populace with favor, albeit a cautious one. No such history accompanies the movement to create a right to redefine the term marriage in the law; there are no national heroes here, no ultimate sacrifices that brought immense, RECOGNIZEABLE benefit to the REST of society. At least on its surface, it comes across (whether fair or not, it is the perception) as the selfish aggrandizement of special privileges beneficial to a small, loud, and heretofore considered out of the mainstream, if not perverse, minority. I am not sure if your comparison of the success of their efforts vs. ours is soley a conseqence of differing campaign tactics. I’ll grant you that sometimes their efforts have often struck me as obnoxious and even tawdry (such as their “pride” parades); but to me, their biggest hurdles are history, morality, and religious conviction, not to mention no mention at all in the Bill of Rights. Those are formidable obstacles to surmount, and it will take more than the presentation of a pretty face to do it. Our battle, on the other hand, has history, tradition, common sense, and most of all, the Bill of Rights behind it. We can afford to be “in your face” defending our right to resist and abolish tyranny with militia arms. It is, and for centuries has been, an established, unalienable, and codified right of the American people. I am open to criticism on this analysis and would welcome any comments. Thanks for the platform! – Arnie
That said, it’s absolutely nuts that they can modify their constitution with a simple majority! Why bother with a constitution if it’s as easy to change as legislature?
California is kind of nuts that way. But most state constitutions are easier, often considerably easier to change than the federal constitution. Pennsylvania, for instance, requires that the General Assembly pass the amendment twice in two consecutive terms. Bare majority vote. That’s just to pose an amendment to voters. After an amendment is proposed in this manner, voters have to ratify it, again with a bare majority vote. Constitutional changes can only be put to voters once every five years.
But in more than a few states, voters can get constitutional changes on the ballot with a certain number of signatures, and all it requires is a majority vote.
What is really funny in this case is the liberal hypocrisy on display.
Liberals are famously “champions of democracy” and all for the voting rights of “the little guy.”
That is, until the “little guy” has the temerity to vote against one of modern leftwing liberalism’s sacred cows.
And then, the “little guy” has to have his obvious racism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, cruelty and hate for cute fuzzy woodland creatures countermanded by the velvet judicial glove on the iron fist of “enlightened” and “compassionate” liberal elites who so obviously know oh-so-much better than “the little guy” does.
But sometimes, that liberal judicial velvet glove malfunctions, sort of like Dr Strangelove’s hand.
And they howl and scream and whine and protest when the system they think they’ve rigged in their favor just refuses to cooperate with their society-remaking goals.
HA!
Here in CA we have to change our state constitution like that in order to get the Legislature to do *anything* – and clearly with their spending habits it still doesn’t really work.
We can’t change the legislature because the state is gerrymandered behind a Democrat Party-Machine controlled iron-curtain — and is run by the SEIU and Teachers Unions (among others) who pay them off with the Union dues’ generated political action funds.
That was the whole purpose behind the noble-sounding effort to ensure *Pre-School for Every Child* – it would have required a huge increase in *credentialed* teachers, just to teach INFANTS — and those Union dues generated by the mandatory increase would have replenished the Union pot that was emptied in a frenzied effort to prevent the Re-Call of the former Uber-Spender Governor…
So the crooked Legislature puts out ridiculous bills (see above) sponsored by the Unions to benefit union employees — or Bills have loopholes written right into the bills that suck the money out for other purposes (like to pay-back the unions, or developer friends, or themselves) and it gets spent before it even gets to Sacramento – so “the Bill” becomes an unfunded mandate… And because we’re locked-down in gerrymandered districts they can’t be fired – so we try to impose term-limits. Because they are crooks. And we hate them.