I wasn’t making a proposal, just stating a fact. And marriage laws have changed considerably over time-- you are overstating their permanence. BTW, it’s not just theoretical: Oregon county bans all marriages.
My position is not that marriage is a right by default, but that if the privilege is extended at all, it must be extended to everybody equally absent a compelling public interest to the contrary*. The electorate has the authority to extend the privilege to everybody or to nobody but they don’t have the authority to single out one group for special rights.
*And whether an exception constitutes a legitimate compelling public interest or “rational basis” is for the judiciary to decide, not the legislature. The legislature can ask and the bench can say no.
While I’m at it, I would also say that Captain Amazing’s examples of “rational basis” are pretty much both non-starters. The “children” point is belied by the fact that infertile couples are allowed to marry, that unmarried people can have children just as easily as married people and that even fertile married couples are under no legal obligation to procreate.
The argument as to “public morality” is even more insubstantial. The word “morality” in this case is so subjective as to be meaningless and I would argue that it amounts to the codification of a purely religious “morality” rather than any genuine protection of public interest.
BTW, here’s the actual prop 22 wording (bolded) as part of the CA family code. You can see why the argument is made that Prop 22 only applies to marriages enacted outside CA:
Like I said, I don’t think they’re good reasons…but they’re reasons. As for the first, states do allow infertility as grounds for divorce or annulment. As for the second, it does amount to the codification of a specific “morality”, but so do laws against prostitution, against pornography, against sodomy (which, I know, isn’t operative since Lawrence), against sex in public, against adultery, against fornication, etc. Moral standards are a political issue, not a judicial one, and there’s precedence saying that a community can impose certain moral standards, especially in sexual matters, on it’s members.
It seems to me that at the time this passed that was a simple statement of fact. If and when AB849 is signed and becomes law, then this statement is no longer true and is voided despite the wording of the Bill.
Section 308.5 says that since California doesn’t allow same-sex marriages, then it won’t recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages. It now will, so 308.5 is no longer valid.
First off, this would seem to say that you can ignore the fact that it was prefaced with the phrase “born”. WTF?
Also, do you realize that A Fetus is not a Person
Well, if you don’t let me remind you. Some controversial cases may have said that potential humans deserve a little respect, but that does not make a puddle of sperm a person, nor does it make what is inside a one week pregnant women a person.
So in this case, you want the court to strictly use the words in the Constitution, and only those words, to divine its meaning. But when the issue is, say, a right to privacy, or the right to have an abortion, you are OK with the court reading between the lines to discover those rights.
No, I am in favor of the spirit and intent of the words. Claiming that the spirit of the text could lean towards cells is just plain odd.
Even between the lines, there is nothing to suggest that a fetus should be treated as a person.
Exactly. Same with the plain reading of the words.
Of course, I agree with that, so it’s hard to argue the contrary…
But it’s also hard for me to accept that even between the lines, the Constitution mandates specifically that a first-trimester fetus abortion cannot be legally restricted by the state. That’s a heck of a specific to find between the lines.
It goes without saying that a woman’s body is her own property.
But the Court also said the in the THIRD trimester, the state could permissibly forbid abortion. How does that fit?
I think the Court erred with that, but I suppose the argument (and maybe this is a fact that needs to really be acknowledged by both sides) is that a fetus is not the same entity at every phase of pregnancy. A third trimester fetus is not really comparable to an two week old embryo. Calling a 30 week fetus a “baby” is something I can see philosophically, but calling a blastocyst a baby is ridiculous.
Only a fraction of one percent of abortions are performed in the third trimester anyway, and even then it’s for compelling medical reasons.
Nope, wasn’t saying that. Just saying there is a fairly sizable minority that won’t be convinced; they’ll have to die off, I expect.
The antigay movement has had its high-water mark - opposition to gay rights is strongly correlated with age.
I think we’ve already seen the backlash, last year, and no pro-gay-rights gains can really do much more to inspire one.
We’ll see. I’ve made my predictions, and I stand by them.
Gotta admit, this California business where some statutes are more equal than others is a new one to me. That’s a tangle I don’t understand.
Under my system? Under my system, insofar as I can be said to have one, same-sex marriage has been legally recognized nationwide since C-38 received Royal Assent on July 20th of this year. Or, if you prefer, under my system, same-sex marriage has been legally recognized in this province since November 5th of last year, when the provincial courts ruled that the common law definition of marriage violated the Charter Rights of gays and lesbians.
As to self-governance, I’ve been over this ground many, many times. By self-governance, you mean absolute majoritarianism. By self-governance, I mean individual autonomy such that I govern myself, and no one can tell me what to do without some degree of justification.
However, my point in this thread was simply to stop you from overlooking the fact that the electorate can and often enough does horrible, unjust things, and that there is no guarantee that they will ever lift the oppression of any specific group of people. The actions of the California legislative assemblies do not change the fact that in most of the US, the courts are rather more likely to grant equal rights to same-sex couples than the electorate is.
IANAL, but that doesn’t seem logical to me. If Prop 22 is unconstitutional according to the US Constitution, it doesn’t matter that there’s a state constitutional requirement that AB 849 not override the initiative. AB 849 isn’t overriding Prop 22; Prop 22 is unconstitutional on a higher level, and should never have been valid law in the first place.
Arnie’s gonna veto. Sigh.
:shakes head: 
Not a surprise. The party could never let him sign it.