Predictions on California Prop 8 ruling today?

I, for one, will be shocked if the courts uphold Prop 8. I just don't see the courts ceding power to the people that way.

then they're just running amok. Not that that can't happen. But this is such a bogus charge, that the ballot measure needed a two-thirds vote by the legislature to be on the ballot in the first place. I have to say, though, it is clever, given that it's just about impossible to get a two-thirds vote on anything in our legislature, which is attested to by the continual fiasco that is our budget.

The other part of the ruling is whether the marriages done in the interim between the initial court ruling and prop 8 willstand. It seems obvious to me that they must; I can't imagine that they'd retroactively revoke the marriage licenses. Nor do I think that would be right, frankly; the marriages were legal at the time.


The truth is that this is just a mess. I feel pessimistic today about the eventual outcome of this issue, and I think legislation like that proposed in New Hampshire represnets the endgame of all of this posturing about "gay marriage." The Yeats line fits: "The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity."

to read on the one hand that two separate referendums passed by California voters are tossed out because they don't have the required 2/3 majority in the legislature to back them up, but a state court can change the definition of marriage all on its own.

The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 8’s ban on same-sex marriage but also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law. [Updated at 10:04 a.m.: The court also ruled that gay couples who wed before the election will continue to be married under state law.]

In listening to my favorite NPR call-in show, where the callers are predicatably disapppointed in the ruling, I continue to be dumbfounded by how stupid people are. If one more person talks about their "right" to call their union marriage, I think I'll :puke: . Even the usually sharp moderator took issue with the guy from NOM (National Organization for Marriage) when he made the point that doomestic partnerships have all the rights and privileges of marriage, saying that, to paraphrase "what people want, though, is the tradition and prestige associated with the term marriage." Well, duh. But then let's be honest about what it's about.

And then the caller who feels "taken over' by religious organizations--who wants to bet we're going to see more nastiness headed the way of the LDS church later today?

it will either go to the Supreme Court, or if will come up for a vote again in the next election cycle and on and on.

Meanwhile gay rights actvists will have demonstrations all over the state, and I expect either houses of woship will be targeted for vandalism or envelopes will be sent to them containing mysterious white powder. Some gays keep suggesting that the gay rights movment needs a "Towering Moral Figure" along the lines of Martin Luther King so that people who are not on board with gay marriage will see how wrong that is. Who is that "towering moral figure" going to be? Perez Hilton? Eugene Robinson-the gay Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Sean Penn chanelling the quiet and soft spoken saint Harvey Milk? LOL Gavin Newsome? I'm sorry, but they don't remind me of MLK.