Whoosh! According to an Associated Press report:

This is interesting. Suddenly, at least in California, the will of the people is being recognized as having some sort of validity. The court left open the idea that people of the same sex could join together in some sort of state recognized union.

Stay tuned for the riots and death threats...


...by the liberal left.

I assume the riots and death threats will involve more than throwing a fit.

Now, when the Minnesota courts decide Franken is the winner, that'll be fun.

Ray, I think you are somewhat misrepresenting the CA SC's ruling. They did not so much "uphold Proposition 8" as they ruled it was properly a State constitutional ammendment rather than a revision and so they refused the plaintiffs' request to through the Proposition out on procedural grounds. That is a somewhat different issue than ruling that the same sex marriage ban is upheld. There are other challenges to the ban.

As it happens, I think the CA SC's ruling was right but only on the narrow grounds to which it applied. Namely, the right of the people to amend the State constitution through the lawfully established procedures is not really subject to court review. Your suggestion however that the State Supreme Court ruled in favor of the people's desire to impose a same sex marriage ban is not really the case. Indeed, the Court ruled the marriages performed prior to the passage of Prop 8 are legally valid and not rendered moot by that passage. This strongly suggests the Court still recognizes a right for same sex couples to marry and it is rather likely to leave the door open to the pending challenges. I believe Prop 8 can very well be overturned on 14th Amendment grounds or the California equivalent, something the court very deliberately did not consider in its ruling. I repeat---if for no other reason than to correct the misleading impression you are creating--the CA SC ruled on a very narrow issue: whether or not the ballot iniative known as Proposition 8 constituted an amendment to the State constition or a revision. The court ruled it was an amendment and thus rejected the petitioners' claim it was improperly offered to the voters. That is all the court ruled on.

I understand marriage is a legal contract and all that but i still wonder if extending it the gay couples is correct. I'm absolutely fine with it being correct.

But no individual is being denied the right to marry. Only the union between two same-sex partners is being given the protection of the law. Is it correct that these unions of two people should be given the protections of marriage although the individuals themselves have never been denied the equal opportunity to marry? Is this somehow extending individual rights to union privileges or someting?

Obviously I'm not stating this correctly but possibly someone gets my drift.

Cy_Click, if marriage were not a legal institution in the United States I would say the denial of marriage for same sex couples would be a nonissue. However, it is. Our government, at all levels, extends certain legal privileges and responsibilities to married couples. I believe things like Proposition 8 unConstitutionally violate the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause because they deny citizens equal access to those legal privileges and responsibilities on the basis of gender. Absent some compelling legal reason to engage in that discrimination, it is not permissible under our Constitution and existing Federal laws. There is an ancilliary issue as well, the Federal Defense of Marriage Act. That misguided piece of legislation is almost certainly going to face a Supreme Court challenge and get tossed. On its very face it violates the due faith and credit clause of the Constitution even without raising 14th Amendment issues of equal protection. Given the emergence of same sex marriage in several States so far it is only a matter of time before the DoMA's section that allows States to ignore legal same sex marriages performed in other States will be challenged. Make no mistake, when the challenge comes the DoMA will be overturned. This will largely make things like Prop 8 into a moot point as same sex couples will be able to go to a same sex marriage State and get married and then come back to their home State. California is something of a legal oddity at the moment as it has some 70,000 plus legally married same sex couples already and the State Supreme Court said those marriages are perfectly and legally valid.