It shouldn't be legal for a majority to vote on the civil rights of a minority. With the right wording and a big paranoia campaign, these ballot measures could take rights away from any minority group.

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If the Supreme Court had overturned Prop 8, it would have been a very aggressive abuse of power, revoking the seperation of powers.

Prop 8 itself, is abhorrent. Don't get me wrong, as a bisexual male, I am very interested in gay marriage rights being recognized in the US. But I'm not willing to sacrifice our Constitution and democracy to do it.

For those of you who find this to be a striking blow against gay marriage, a word of encouragement:

Every day, a voter who was raised in the "bible says its wrong, it should be illegal" era dies, and 20 people who were raised in the "just because my religion forbids it, doesn't mean it should be illegal, it is about acceptance of other lifestyles" comes of age to vote.

I'm predicting Prop 8 will be overturned the RIGHT way, by a vote of the people, long before we have a different president.

Also kudos to the Supreme Court for remember "ex post facto".

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I'm just waiting for our vote on universal health care. :)

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I cannot speak to the Court's interpretation of the law and the legal arguments in this case, because I just don't have the expertise. However, I think it would be very foolish to overlook the huge victory that is those 18000 marriages that have been allowed to remain intact.

That is a huge victory for those couples, and it leaves open a huge door with a big red arrow pointing through it and the words "consitutional challenge under equal protection clause" stamped on it in three-foot high letters...

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I have always held that getting married is no civil right, a constitutional right. It is a political right given by a majority of voters.

The California Supreme Court made it abundantly clear.

I do not understand why gay and lesbian activist are fighting for marriage, the should be fighting for Civil Unions. In that fight they have my full support.

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I hereby official remove the West Coast's title of "the Left Coast" until such time as gay marriage is legal in California.

Perhaps you should get used to being known as the Left Behind Coast.

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Since California is a state loaded with "can't-hack-its," "loopy-daydreamers," "pie-in-the-sky'ers," "rugged-individualists-on-welfare,"and various and sundry losers on either side the great political mud puddle, it comes as no surprise that the California Supreme Court hands down a decision guaranteed to please no one and solve nothing.

All Californians are to blame for the state of their state since they too often participate in that great miasmatic, quagmire of democratic demagoguery and political quackery, initiative and referendum.

One living in a more intelligent part of the country wonders how many Christian, heterosexual serial monogamists voted in favor of Prop 8 to prevent queers from the joys of divorce court? Then again, how many of California's minority citizens, victims of past and on-going racial discrimination, voted for Prop 8 because homosexuality is taboo in "their" community (RuPaul, ain't gay, he just dresses that way!)

Oh, well, California's going to be broke any day now so why should the rest of us care. If the rest of us are lucky, the big San Andreas earthquake will hit soon and Sodom-On-the-Sea will drop into the Pacific.

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Wul i hope all them queermos lernt a lesson. God created divorce for a man and a woman!


Get some adhesive change you can believe in!
braceforimpact.org

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California: Some day we will catch up to Iowa.

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Many of this nation's founders, most notably Thomas Jefferson (though he was far from alone), were deeply concerned about its potential for "the tyranny of the majority" -- the ability of majorities to use majority rule to oppress minorities, the one great flaw in democratic theory. Hence the Bill of Rights, written specifically as a defense against such tyranny, and also the 14th Amendment, enacted immediately after the Civil War to define U.S. citizenship and thus protect -- though adequate enforcement would require the passage of yet another hundred years -- the rights of African-Americans.

But today’s ruling by the California State Supreme Court not only upholds the infinite hatefulness of Proposition 8; it nullifies all protection against the majority tyranny the founders so feared. And given the hard-right ideology of the Bush Supreme Court, the California ruling will undoubtedly be upheld and thereby become the permanent law of the land.

While these results are bad enough, the outcry over the California ruling -- focused as it is on the devastating loss of citizenship rights suffered by homosexuals -- obscures the decision’s far greater consequence: the de facto legalization of theocracy, with the result there is now no longer any judicial defense against its unspeakable savagery.

The public support for Proposition 8 reveals the magnitude of the theocratic threat. The Mormons and the Roman Catholic Church joined forces to organize the California initiative to outlaw gay marriage, invoking the biblical principle that homosexuality is a mortal sin and that a homosexual is therefore an “abomination” -- an affront to the ever-vengeful god of Abraham: that is, the deity of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The Christian effort garnered a decisive majority vote -- 52 percent -- with polls indicating that actual public support ran as high as 57 percent.

But the terrifying implications of these numbers were suppressed by Big Business Media. The Big Lie analysts who said they were shocked by Proposition 8’s enactment and reassured us it was merely an anomaly were widely published and broadcast. Truthful analysts -- those who pointed out the California results were predictable given earlier findings that 63 percent of the U.S. population believes the Bible is the infallible word of god -- were methodically silenced. Additional data -- the breathtaking misogyny evident in popular opposition to reproductive choice (51 percent) and the hatred of science proven by wholesale rejection of evolution (60 percent) -- portrays a Christian population already so willfully ignorant and bigoted its only present-day doctrinal counterparts are products of the harshest Islamic despotisms. Hence the California results: not only statistically unavoidable, but literally the knell of doom for what little remains of U.S. constitutional liberty -- no doubt the reason their true significance was so thoroughly censored.

In truth, Christians and their Big Business financiers have been scheming for at least a century to impose theocracy on the United States. And now they’ve won: once the Bush Court’s theocratic majority upholds the California decision, its meaning -- that constitutional rights can be overturned by popular vote -- removes the last barrier to the Christian version of Talibanic despotism.

Why theocracy? Because its vicious sexual oppression and its omnipresent death-squad paranoia maximizes profits: the example of the U.S. South long ago proved a theocratically terrorized workforce is the most profitable workforce on earth. And as we all know, the propagation of capitalism -- absolute protection of the ruling class, total subjugation of all the rest of is -- is the sole purpose of government and governance at all levels of the United States.

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What these Judges did was Codify Discrimination, Prejudice and Inequality, not unlike the Dread Scott Decision..!

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Anytime you begin an article like that as if you speak for everyone you should expect those who disagree to speak out and I am. Whether it is 2000 or 1800 homosexuality is not the norm. It is certainly more common but no less a subculture and not the mainstream and thereby not deserving of acceptance as the standard of American life.

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California's Dark Ages are upon us. There is no positive spin on this new age of darkness brought on by this incoherent act of stupidity by these so called judges. The fact is that this ruling was wrong and incomprehensible. How can there be different rights for sub groups of citizens?

It is not up to a majority vote who can and can not have the rights under the constitution. It's not about the majority. It's about equal rights afforded to all of us under the constitution. Anyone who sees this a good thing is either against equal rights and therefor a bigot or is completely confused about what equal means under the law.

This was not only a bad decision it was a non-decision. California is entering a dark age where it's time to consider leaving the state that was once a beacon of light for the country and the world. Combine this tragic ruling with the state of California's financial crisis brought to us by similar right wing Christian thugs and you have nothing short of a disaster.

Not only do you have a dark cloud of selective hate and discrimination over the population but the infrastructure and stability of this huge economy are about to implode and the resulting mess is going to put California on the skids for years to come.

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After having a long and thought-provoking discussion about same-sex (gay) marriage with a gay friend of mine, we both started to question if legal marriage (legal unions) itself is a form of discrimination and/or if marriage should be a legal right to begin with. Think about this for a moment, if someone is single or in a legally unrecognized relationship (which more and more couples and parents are in), they are not given the same legal rights and financial benefits as a married couple, so how is this not some form of discrimination toward people who are somehow unable to marry or choose not to be married?

Ultimately, the legal institution of marriage itself should be under scrutiny, as far as equal rights and discrimination are concerned. Marriage itself is not even mentioned in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights. So, is legal marriage itself a constitutional right, as others have asked? Let me restate, is legal marriage itself a constitutional right for anyone - gay, straight, black, white, purple, and so on? I do not think so.

Why do married individuals receive certain rights and benefits that their unmarried counterparts do not receive in this day and age?

What makes married individuals special or important enough in our present society to receive special rights and benefits that others do not receive?

Do marriage rights and privileges truly benefit the whole of society in this day and age, especially when we take into account divorce rates, the amount of single and divorced parents, and the amount of couples that have remarried?

Is the state(s) over-stepping their authority by giving special rights* and rights not afforded by the constitution to individuals who are married?

* special rights : "laws granting rights to one or more groups which are not extended to other groups"

I think it is important to look at all the angles. This angle is not a question about gay marriage though, but about marriage itself.

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"Even though there is no universally accepted definition of 'democracy', there are two principles that any definition of democracy is required to have. The first principle is that all members of the society have equal access to power and the second that all members enjoy universally recognised freedoms and liberties."

And let us review the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

"The Equal Protection Clause , part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall… deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The Equal Protection Clause can be seen as an attempt to secure the promise of the United States' professed commitment to the proposition that "all men are created equal" by empowering the judiciary to enforce that principle against the states."

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Technically, while I despise Proposition 8 and all that it stood for, the court was probably right that the suit stretches the credibility of what is or is not constitutionally acceptable under current California law...which is the tragedy here.

I admire the lone dissenter among the judges, who saw the real danger of rampant populism and its capacity to trample the rights of the individual, and whom, I suspect, understood the danger that a shift of mood could bring to ALL minorities.

What past supporters of Prop 8 need to ask themselves is not "How do I feel about gay people marrying?", but rather, "What if popular opinion turns against my minority? Who will champion my rights?"

It isn't the result that is significant, but the principle at stake that makes this a crucial test. If whim and chance can strip personal liberties and grant entitlements, equality becomes a fleeting fiction subject to cash driven ad campaigns, and ultimately cheapens us all.

The soul of real liberalism is guarding the rights of all, pushing for the greatest level of personal freedom that can be managed inside the boundaries of a civil society, not simply for one class of person or another, but for all men and women of every culture, heritage , and background.

I cannot muster anger for the court's choice...because they handed the real question of importance back to the people who need to address it...the people of California.

Let's hope that this time, come 2010, they think carefully about the impact and implications of their vote before they cast it.

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There is still a faction of Judicial voters who can't or won't make the leap and believe Homosexuality is not a choice of lifestyle, but physiological fact of nature.
As long as the misguided can view it as a "deviant" choice, they will feel empowered to stymy any attempt to call it an unconstitutional restriction of rights or freedom. So the fight continues

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wow, alternet reporting on a conspiracy coming to light while at the same time running an article making a mockery of widely accepted "conspiracy" theories.

conspiracies do exist, which is why you can be charged with a conspiracy in court of law. why is it so hard to believe that the government IS NOT your friend. when has a government EVER been for protecting their people? governments are one of the main reasons for human suffering.

take a look at america, once the bastion of freedom. now we have illegal phone taps and surveilance. laws that make it illegal to hurt someones feelings (cyber bullying act), no more habeus corpus. this has become the proverbial "nanny state".

george orwell is dancing tango in his grave

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People voted, again. They don't want the institution of marriage to be bastardized by homosexuals. they are tired of PC ranters shouting down any attempt to say what is on their mind, when that doesn't conform to the latest situational-ethics nonsense.
The voters generally don't mind if some homosexuals have a civil union, but they don't want to be insulted by having something that they have valued forever turned into another buzzword.
The voters in the majority do not want to have their values reduced to talking points.
They do not want to have thousands of years of tradition turned upside down.
And they damn sure don't want to allow some fringe group to find a way to become yet another protected class that will ruin more of life in America. Mark my words when I tell you that the homosexual contingent will stop at nothing to get their way. I have to admit that they are absolutely brilliant in demonizing all that dare to voice any opposition to their platform. They represent a nasty, abusive trend in these United States where any good, quiet person may be cowed into submission by not lowering him or herself to the level of public discourse that is present daily. Observe any number of other aggrieved classes that mount shrill attacks to get what they want, and count on the polite behaviour of the populace to sit back in quiet disgust at such obscene, vulgar, aggressive displays.
Let the damn homosexuals have civil unions, but don't let them ruin something that they certainly don't respect by calling their sham relationships marriages.

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The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate virtually any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. The California Supreme Court has been ruling on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a controversial law passed in November. Proposition 8 makes it so that the state of California will not recognize gay marriage, but will allow civil unions, which will have the exact same legal weight. The Prop 8 decision is that is has been upheld, as the Justices including Chief Justice Ronald George felt it didn't violate the Constitution. Next might be whether you can go to a loan company for quick cash. Who I can get my cash now from, though isn't up to the California Supreme Court.

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