"I Got a Rock!": Why Proponents of Proposition 8 Clearly Lost Today

[mcguffin]

 As many of you know, I'm a constitutional law junkie.

Today, the California State Supreme Court handed down a 6-1 ruling on Proposition 8 in a set of three cases collectively known as Strauss. If you listen to the news, the supporters of Proposition 8 scored a win. Here's what the soundbytes say:
 

• Proposition 8 was upheld. The State of California

Comments

[chapel_of_words]

See I've read the same materials and got very agitated. It's true that the court has upheld the right to marriage, but they also seem to have - by the very wording they and you reference - to have legitimized the use of majority rule to relabel minority citizens into segmentations

[mcguffin]

Somehow this posted before I was done with it. I'm only about 1/2 through writing the post.

More soon. And I will be updating this thread.
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[mcguffin]

The complete version of the post is now up, and I've also integrated your example into the post.

I'm not saying that the marriage-equality folks won. I'm saying that the Prop 8 supporters also lost something.

They may have thought that they would remove more than the right to use the term "marriage" from same-sex couples.

More importantly, the CA Supreme Court totally punted its role of monitoring equal protection. I agree with the heart of Justice Moreno's analysis.

[mcguffin]

I spent some time reflecting on "Mob-Rule F8cknuts" as a system of government, and that lead me to a dusty old clause of the US Constitution, the guarantee clause. Art. IV Section 4

[muses_aria]

I really like the parallel that you draw between this decision and separate but equal. It is easy to see why people don't have cognitive dissonance in supporting that marriage should be man/woman because they can rationalize it as equal rights just under a different name. However, I think that it is a very big issue anytime two groups of people are given different rights, even in name. This has not worked so well for us in the past, and I don't think it is a good idea now. I think that it would just be easier to call every relationship contract something other than a marriage, but that's just my silly view of separation of church and state ;)

I also appreciated your delineation of the amendment and revision processes. I had forgotten the exact differences, and I think that it is an important issue in this case.

[Disclaimer: I've had my head stuck in I-O articles for the past few months and not closely followed the arguments.]

[mcguffin]

I totally agree. Either everyone should have access to the term "marriage" or the government should reserve "marriage" as a religious term where believers can recognize marriages as they see fit.

For example, the UU church has been performing same-sex marriages for decades. They may choose to recognize same-sex marriages, while Catholics limit it to opposite sex marriage.

All religions should be free to determine their own internal rules, but those rules shouldn't cross into the public sphere.

[chapel_of_words]

This also begs the inevitable question of whether this "by label" only really matters. The state may not issue marriage liscenses to same-sex couples - but will that keep them from referring to themselves as married? Will it prevent churches from advertising the marriage of Bob & Bill or Sue & Sally? Lessening free speech to prohibit people from calling themselves married *would* be a revision of the Constitution I'm pretty sure - so I'm not clear if at least in the public arena gays are as "married" as anyone else in discussion, dialogue, news stories and public announcements by private entities.

Tim C.

[mcguffin]

You've picked up on an interesting thread on the first amendment's connection.

I honestly don't know how that would fit in, but it's something that I'm going to mull over.

[tinsoldier]

I have to admit that I don't have as much legal knowledge that it might take to really wade into this debate. However, I will find it very amusing if the conservative side of this ends up actually signing their own doom. I think that it's probably only a matter of time before this house of cards they've built comes tumbling down around them, and it'll make me very happy if they're the authors of their own doom.

You know how much I despise the inherent labels that people apply to others. I really dislike it when it's legally upheld. So, I'm looking forward to watching this fall at some point in the near future.