California's voters, not its courts, are the final judges of same-sex couples' right to marry. And even if they're barred from marrying, gays and lesbians are not the victims of unconstitutional discrimination
Those were the two clearest messages in Tuesday's 6-1 ruling by the state Supreme Court that upheld Proposition 8, the November initiative that amended the California Constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. They came from a court that had seemingly said something quite different a year earlier.
That last sentence is a charming bit of editorializing that demonstrates how fundamentally clueless many of our supposed elites are about the legal grounds for gay marriage and the separation of powers in the state's constitution. A year ago, the state supreme court said that the state constitution as it was written at that time did not allow the state to forbid gay marriage. The constitution can be amended, and Prop 8 was the amendment. Really, what the court decided yesterday was whether the amendment was proper, not whether there is a "right" to gay marriage.
Prop 8 should rightly be seen as a loss for the gay rights crowd, but it is also a loss for the state's unofficial ruling class in the political, media, and legal worlds, where support for gay marriage is practically a totem of membership. But, as with last week's special election, the voters were having none of this. The difference in values and priorities between CA's voters and its liberal elites is growing increasingly stark.
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