California Supreme Court rules majority can take away minority’s rights

Today the California Supreme Court upheld Prop 8, the constitutional amendment that took away the right of gay people to marry in the state.  The majority may now invalidate a minority’s rights at the ballot box.

Remember, this isn’t the same as the other couple of dozen states, like Oregon, that have banned gay marriage in their constitution.  In those states, the right for gays to marry did not exist.  In California, the court declared the right for gays to marry to be a constitutional right, and then the haters passed the constitutional amendment to take away that existing right.

Strangely enough, the Court left intact the marriages of some 18,000 gay couples who exercised their right before Prop 8 passed.  I guess somehow that 18,001st gay couple to get married would’ve been the trigger for gaypocalypse or something.  Weird, isn’t it, that 18,000 gay Californians have a right that hundreds of thousands of other gay Californians do not, a right the 18,000 would lose if they ever got divorced.

Conceivably, a majority of Californians could pass constitutional amendments to ban anyone from anything, so long as they didn’t touch the federally-protected classes of gender, religion, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, familial status, disability, or veterans status.  No decision on rights from the California Supreme Court can be considered final, because the majority could always overturn it.  This is much bigger than a ban on gay marriage, this sets precedent for the majority to take anyone’s rights!  A right isn’t a right if it can be taken away; it’s a privilege.  The California Supreme Court just decided that all rights in the Republic not granted by the federal constitution are now just privileges, granted unto you by the majority.

The reaction from some of the knuckle-draggers has been predictable.  This on from the HuffPo comments is typical:

There is ONE and only ONE fair solution to this problem and it is the same solution that has been proposed by many people including Elton John. Homosexuals should be granted all of the same rights, benefits of married heterosexual couples, the union should be identified by a different term than “marriage”.

Homosexuals don’t seem willing to accept that and I think that it speaks volumes to the underlying intentions.

Great point! Just like little black kids in the 1950s should be granted all the same rights and benefits of education as the white kids, but they should be housed in separate buildings identified by a different term than “schools”.

Strange how gay folks don’t seem willing to accept their lifelong loving partnerships being trivialized by straights as some sort of “sub-marriage” or “alternamarriage”. Homobigots don’t seem willing to see gay folks as equals and their need to cling to a word speaks volumes to the underlying intentions. You’d grant an equal marriage so long as it isn’t called “marriage”? It’s really just an eight letter word you’re hung up on?

Is marriage religious? Fine, keep it in your church, take government out of it completely, and ban anyone from it who makes you uncomfortable. But if marriage is a civil institution with government benefits, all citizens get to participate equally. Restricting one’s choice of lifelong partners to just half the population isn’t just homophobic, it’s sexist!

It will be fun being a cynical old coot, someday telling my grand-nieces and nephews about the days when we used to openly discriminate against gay people… if I can get past their holo-tattoos and cyber-implants.