The California Supreme Court today upheld a voter-approved ban -- the recent so-called Prop 8 -- on same-sex marriage, but in the same ruling decided that the estimated 18,000 gay couples who got married before the ban took effect last November will continue as legally married couples.
Is that not an astonishing ruling? Same-sex couples who were married several months ago did so legally, but couples seeking the same status today seek an illegal contract -- illegal because of religious insanity. Excuse me a second while my head explodes. In other words, in the brief time after the first Supreme Court ruling on this issue in May 2008 until the religious crazies could get a ballot initiative before the voters last November -- a total of six months -- same-sex marriage was legal. Now it's not. WTF?
Today's ruling indicates the Court was unwilling to, in effect, nullify the decision by a majority of California voters (52% to 48%) who decided in the November 2008 initiative to deny the legal, civil right of marriage to couples who happened to be of the same sex. That decision had, of course, no basis in law -- except mob law -- and had its origins exclusively in religious nuttiness and church-ordered persecution.
Today's ruling codifies the right of the majority to tyrannize the minority -- at the very least where it concerns denying legal status to people who happen to be homosexual. How else should one read the decision? It was only a year ago that the California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage, saying sexual orientation, like race or gender, "does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights" including, obviously, the right to sign a marriage contract that contains the same rights and responsibilities whether the signatories are homosexual or heterosexual.
Last year, writing for the 4-3 majority, Chief Justice Ronald George wrote, "We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples." The ruling was comparable to the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a Virginia case overturning that state's ban on interracial marriage (which was also a religious nut-ball ban to begin with). The California ruling was about civil marriage; about fundamental, equal rights under the law. It has nothing to do with religion. People who want to worship a god or an animal or a piece of furniture have a legal right to deny sanctifying a marriage between people who do not worship a god or an animal or a piece of furniture. And that's where it ends. The State issues a marriage license, not a snarling pack of religious bigots.
But, we know the story of Prop 8, don't we. Shortly after last year's ruling on the denial of the civil right of marriage, the religious assholes went to work and Proposition 8 was born in an attempt (today proven successful) to duplicate a 2000 voter referendum that banned same-sex marriage. It was that law that was struck down in May of 2008.
So, what now? For the time being, the Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, is dead, murdered in California by religious freaks who insist god said he didn't want the queers to marry. The Clause provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws".
Hey, ask any religious idiot and he or she will tell you without hesitation: "Gawd's law is waaayyyyy more important than man's law." The California Supreme Court today agreed with that steaming pile of religious bullshit.
- MDM
Mike Malloy can be heard daily on his radio show 9pm - 12pm ET. Visit
www.mikemalloy.com to stream live or find a station near you.
Sadly, whenever I hear this topic debated I rarely hear supporters challenged from this direction. We need to start asking them if they really support this ability to take away civil rights with a simple majority vote. Ask them, "So if a state voted by referendum that marriage was only between one woman and one man of the same race that would be ok too?". Do states/people have the right to define marriage in this way as well? I doubt they would be comfortable affirming this version of their argument, and good it should make them uncomfortable!
Have you written to congress or posted?
Second, BOTH the Federal and the California Constitutions have an equal protection clause, saying that ALL people in both the state and the country will be treated equally under the law!
Damn the wackos poking their noses into someone else's legal contract!!!! I wonder if they would mind if we started to tax their "belief factories"-- I mean, they do produce something, no?
(Smoking piles of heap, but hey, who's counting?)
Your fan eternal,
Julie in Scottsdale, AZ
Sounds silly? Apparently not if you are on CA Supreme Court.
It's time the LGBT Community realizes that marches, rallies, blogs, youtube videos and bumper stickers are NOT going to win this fight. LGBT Americans are taxed as full citizens of our nation while being officially relegated to second-class citizenship. The Republican Party is happy with that arrangement, and the Democratic Party is too scared of being painted as being to "pro-gay" to do anything more than just talk about it while doing nothing.
In CA the answer is clear. The State of California is literally broke. The fiscal crisis that looms over our state is massive and overshadows nearly all other issues. If even a moderate percentage of LGBT
Californians went and stopped their state income tax payroll withholding, it would bring the state to a halt overnight.
The answer in the fight for LGBT equality is to use the power of the Gay Dollar. It's time to tell the rest of America that if LGBT Americans are not treated as full citizens, then they refuse to be taxed as such.
Furthermore, so-called "left-handed" items like scissors, pitchers, and guitars must be destroyed. Sinistralists like Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney defile the guitar and the bass by stringing them in an unnatural manner. If God wanted sinistrals to play unnaturally, He'd made backwards pianos, violins, and saxophones.
Beware the sinistral agenda! Both John McCain and Barack Obama are sinistrals, so it is obvious how deeply this sinistral agenda is trying to force acceptance of their "leftie" ways down our throat!
(Tongue slightly in-cheek - my grandpa and mother were both forced to tie their dominant left hands behind their backs in school. My brother's young enough to be accepted for his sinistral orientation. This is a fun tack to take with a left-handed homobigot.)
It'll be, um, interesting, shall we say, to see where that leads us.