Miscellaneous

Maybe the gays should just take their discrimination and go away quietly...

As we've talked about on this site, and as has been talked about a gajillion other places, California's Prop 8 passed on Tuesday, stripping gay couples of their recently court-granted right to marry. Because, apparently, if they marry, our schools will have to teach our children about gay marriage and our daughters will come home talking about marrying princesses. ...If I ever have a daughter, she could do a helluva lot worse than marrying a princess, but that's beside the point.

Two interesting things yesterday, about this. First is the credible argument that Obama inadvertently helped the demise of gay marriage in California as our state had a record black voter turnout, and blacks were polling in favor of Prop 80 70-to-30, well beyond any other racial denomination. According to one political scientist, while there's been a "generational shift" causing younger voters to be more in favor of equal rights for gays, that shift hasn't hit the black community.

But folks aren't taking Prop 8's success sitting down. The ACLU has filed a petition with the California Supreme Court arguing that the Prop is an improper attempt to chisel away the constitutional right to equality. The linked article doesn't discuss the details, but the basic gist of the argument as I understand it is that California law allows propositions or other methods to make tiny amendments to the California constitution on their own. But where there's a significant change to the constitution, changing its application or effect, the amendment must be legislatively approved. And the Legislature never approved Prop 8 and, thus the argument goes, the amendment to be created by Prop 8 is illegal. The argument sounds good on its face, though I admit to being ignorant on any of the details so I have no idea how strong it will turn out to be. But we can hope.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on November 06, 2008 (boomark / email).