Just for the record, no one’s “rights” are abolished. No one is saying that gays can’t marry, but if you want to marry someone, then you have to marry someone of the opposite sex. It’s like me demanding the “right” to drive 200 miles an hour, and then complaining when the stae says no. I have the right to petition for a driver’s license, but I have to follow the rules.
The comparison with the struggle of blacks in this country is also all wet, and is offensive to many African Americans who clearly see the difference between being DENIED something versus having to follow some rules.
BTW, flame all you want, I’ve really stopped reading this Board as it has become dominated by liberal America-bashers who tolerate no dissent from their views while preaching “tolerance”. Bite me
So right and wrong are determined by a 52% majority vote or a group of judges? I love moral relativism!
Slavery in the US was JUST until 1865 when all of a sudden it became UNJUST.
Banning interracial marriage in the US was JUST until 1967 when all of a sudden it became UNJUST!
Please stay tuned for further cases when a judge might make a contrary decision and change your whole concept of RIGHT vs. WRONG.
My comprehension’s fine, thanks for asking, I’ll tell him you said hi.
Sorry, the pro-SSM people first wanted a NO on 8 and they failed so they went to the court and failed again and now are complaining that neither the court nor the voters whould’ve been able to decide on it form the get go.
And sometimes a dramatic change is what’s needed. For what it’s worth, I skimmed through the decision looking at their examples, and the only one that seemed to me to be a alid comparison was the discussion of a constitutional amendment on the Death Penalty, which would affect a fundamental right, the right to life. If any constitutational change affects a fundamental right, then the change needs more than a 50% vote.
Gee, if we only had some overarching meta-law that guaranteed people’s rights so that a legislature or a referendum/initiative couldn’t take them away! – only by the difficult process of amending the overarching meta-law itself could tjat be done. It’s too bad the Founding Fathers never came up with an idea like that, isn’t it?
And as soon as enough people decided that those things should be changed, they were changed. “The rights of minorities shouldn’t be decided by a vote,” has a nice ring to it, but practically speaking, it’s pretty much unworkable in a democracy. And, honestly, that’s probably for the best. Consider, for example, that an aristocracy is also a minority, and that our country was founded on the idea that the majority should, indeed, have a vote on exactly what rights they were and were not allowed.
Anyway, my take away from this decision is the good news that existing marriages were allowed to stand. I didn’t think the overall challenge had a chance, but I was worried about that part. Of course, I’m sure the bastards behind Prop. 8 are already ginning up something for 2010 to take care of that. I don’t think they’ll have a chance, though. 2008 was their last gasp at glory. From here on out, it’s all down hill for them.
What I want is for judges to make a decision based on the merits of a case and a good interpretation of the law, not for decisions to be made based on legal tactics and what might happen in court Z if we make the right decision in court X. Maybe this decision will mean that gay marriage will be easier to obtain in the future. But what it also means is that you only need 50% of the CA votes to remove a fundamental right from a class of people. That is a bad decision.
I have a question for those in favor of SSM who have a problem with both Prop 8 and this ruling. Who, or what, should decide these things? I understand that you feel it is a basic right and shouldn’t be subject to the whim of the populace, but who or what group do you want to make that determination? Surely you can see that whatever solution you come up with, it would also have to work for other things down the road. So is there some super-duper ethics panel? If so, who chooses its members? Is there something else?
I’m not understanding what process would satisfy you. Any suggestions?
Maybe I missed it- and I’m genuinely not being sarcastic here- but who in this thread that is for SSM has expressed an issue with this ruling? I’m seeing lots of logical folks pointing out that legally, this was the correct ruling (the law was instated legally), but those same are expressing general feelings of shame over their state’s original passage of Prop 8, no?
Well, suppose that (somehow) a majority of California voters approved another proposition amending the California constitution to define marriage as being strictly between two people of the same race. Would you have a problem with the courts striking that down?
[QUOTE=John Stuart Mill]
Like other tyrannies, the tyranny of the majority was at first, and is still vulgarly, held in dread, chiefly as operating through the acts of the public authorities. But reflecting persons perceived that when society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. **Protection, therefore, against the tyranny of the magistrate is not enough; there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling, against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them; to fetter the development and, if possible, prevent the formation of any individuality not in harmony with its ways, and compel all characters to fashion themselves upon the model of its own. **There is a limit to the legitimate interference of collective opinion with individual independence; and to find that limit, and maintain it against encroachment, is as indispensable to a good condition of human affairs as protection against political despotism. — On Liberty, The Library of Liberal Arts edition, p.7.
[/QUOTE]
Or flaming liberals like James Madison:
[QUOTE=Madison]
“A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” --Federalist 10
[/QUOTE]
Perhaps because they were appealing to a state’s high court, in reference to a state matter? Can a state court even rule on a federal question absent a tie to a state question?
To take another famous California example: OJ Simpson was found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt when he was tried for the murder of his wife. I think that the jury might have made a mistake in his case. Does this mean that I want to scrap trial by jury? No, but it means that I admit that sometimes juries can make mistakes.
My problem with Proposition 8: it removes a fundamental right from a group of people for no good reason at all.
My problem with the CA initiative process: you can remove a fundamental right from the constitution with a 50% vote.
My problem with today’s decision: that the CA supreme court should have put its foot down and specified that removing a fundamental right is a Constitutional revision, not a simple amendment.
I am OK with the Supreme Court making final decisions. But I also realize that sometimes they will make the wrong decisions, and hope that this will be corrected over time. I am OK with the people or the legislature changing the CA constitution. But the process we have right now in California is flawed and needs to be fixed.
Remember, I don’t like the ruling, but think it’s probably the right one given the procedural issues, so maybe I’m not the one to ask, but I’ll take a stab. Ideally, I’d like the US Supreme Court to step in and invalidate DOMA, and these types of state amendments to state constitutions pursuant to the 14th Amendment.
That’s bad public policy but not necessarily a bad judicial decision. The Court should make its decision based upon the law, not on the result the Court wants to achieve.
The fact that California permits the electorate to remove fundamental Constitutional rights by simple majority initiative is a problem created by Hiram Johnson and the reformers of the early 20th Century who wrote that possibility into the law. The proper solution is initiative reform or an opinion deeming Prop. 8 a violation of the federal constitution.
As the Court noted, many states with an initiative process have stronger restrictions on what the public can and cannot do to the state Constitution via initiative. California has no similar restrictions, and the Court had nothing to hang its hat on to suggest the people cannot make this kind of Constitutional change via simple majority initiative.
The real problem here is with California’s procedure to amend its constitution. There’re several really good reasons why the US Constitution is so bleeding hard to amend.
You, my sir, need to read a good summary of the Supreme Court of the United States under the “substantive due process” era (Lochner the seminal case). During this time, the Supreme Court decided that most attempts by the progressive legislatures of various states and the federal government to initiate protective laws for things like working hours, safety conditions, etc., were a violation of the freedom of parties to contract as they desired. It thus struck such laws down. This continued until Franklin Roosevelt threatened to have Congress pack the Court with additional members sufficient to overcome the resistance of the Court to such laws, at which time the Court yielded, eschewed the “substantive due process” method of review, and allowed government to get along with the business of modernizing food safety, worker safety, etc. laws.
