As you may have already heard, in support of Proposition 8, the California
Supreme Court has upheld the ban on gay "marriages" in that state. This is
good news for Bible-believing Christians, particularly in light of what has
been happening on the East Coast of the USA. As the following article points
out, at this current time, five US states allow gay "marriages". These are
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Maine. Furthermore, New York
and New Jersey, and quite possibly New Hampshire, may soon legalize gay
"marriage" as well.

The main drawback to the California ruling is that it will allow the current
18,000 same-sex "marriages" to remain legal.


California High Court Upholds Gay Marriage Ban

By JOHN SCHWARTZ - NYT

May 26, 2009


The California Supreme Court upheld a ban on same-sex marriage Tuesday,
ratifying a decision made by voters last year. The ruling comes at a time
when several state governments have moved in the opposite direction.

The court's decision does, however, preserve the 18,000 same-sex marriages
performed between the justices' ruling last May that same-sex marriage was
constitutionally protected and voters' passage in November of Proposition 8,
which banned it.

The court's opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George for a 6-to-1
majority, noted that same-sex couples still had a right to civil unions.
Such unions, the opinion said, gives those couples the ability to "choose
one's life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially
recognized and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the
constitutionally based incidents of marriage."

Justice George wrote that Proposition 8 did not "entirely repeal or
abrogate" the right to such a protected relationship. Instead, he said, it
"carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional
rights, reserving the official designation of the term 'marriage' for the
union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law."

The 18,000 existing marriages can stand, he wrote, because Proposition 8 did
not include language specifically saying it was retroactive.

Heated reaction to the decision began immediately, with protesters blocking
traffic near the Supreme Court building in San Francisco and advocates for
same-sex marriage making plans for their own ballot initiative.

In Los Angeles, Jennifer C. Pizer, marriage project director for the gay
rights organization Lambda Legal, said the decision "puts it to us to repair
the damage at the ballot box." One of the state's largest gay rights groups,
Equality California, sent an e-mail message to supporters pleading for
contributions to raise $500,000 toward "a massive campaign to put an
initiative on the ballot and win."

Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights,
called the decision "a terrible blow to the thousands of gay and lesbian
Californians who woke up this morning hoping and praying their status as
equal citizens of this state would be restored."

Those who backed Proposition 8 were elated. Andrew P. Pugno, general counsel
for ProtectMarriage.com, the leading group behind last year's initiative,
said he and his allies were "very gratified" by the decision.

"This is the culmination of years of hard work to preserve marriage in
California," Mr. Pugno said in an e-mail message.

Kenneth W. Starr, dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law, who had
argued before the justices in favor of Proposition 8, said the ruling
"represents a ringing judicial affirmation of the right of the people of
California to amend the State Constitution at the ballot box."

The California court ruled last May that same-sex couples enjoyed the same
fundamental "right to marry" as opposite-sex couples. That sweeping 4-to-3
decision provoked a backlash from opponents that led to Proposition 8,
which, after a bitter campaign fight, garnered 52 percent of the vote in
November.

Tuesday's opinion focused on whether the use of a voter initiative to narrow
constitutional rights under Proposition 8 went too far.

Supporters of same-sex marriage, who filed several suits challenging the
proposition after its adoption, argued that the change to the state's
Constitution was so fundamental that the initiative was not an amendment at
all but instead a "revision," a term for measures that rework core
constitutional principles.

Under California law, revisions cannot be decided through a simple signature
drive and a majority vote, as with Proposition 8. Instead, they can be
placed on the ballot only with a two-thirds vote by the Legislature.

But the justices said the proposition was an amendment, not a revision. It
has been historically rare for the state's courts to overturn initiatives on
the ground that they are actually revisions, and many legal scholars had
deemed the challenge to Proposition 8 a long shot.

During oral arguments, in March, the justices' questions clearly anticipated
the reasoning of Tuesday's majority opinion, with Justice Joyce L. Kennard
suggesting then that even if the initiative took away the "label of
marriage," it did not undermine the substantive rights involved. Mr. Minter,
representing the plaintiffs, disagreed, arguing that without the word
"marriage," same-sex couples would find "our outsider status
enshrined in
our Constitution."

Chief Justice George's opinion dealt directly with that point, stating that
the court understood the importance of the word and was not trying to
diminish that importance. But, he wrote, the legal right of people to call
themselves married is only one of the rights granted to same-sex couples in
the decision last May, and so "it is only the designation of marriage --
albeit significant -- that has been removed by this initiative measure."

Karl M. Manheim, a professor at Loyola Law School Los Angeles who had filed
a brief with the court opposing Proposition 8, called the decision a "safe"
one from justices who can be recalled by voters. The change wrought by
Proposition 8 was anything but narrow, Professor Manheim said, and claiming
that the word "marriage" is essentially symbolic is like telling black
people that sitting in the back of the bus is not important as long as the
front and the back of the bus arrive at the same time.

In nearly three months since the case was argued, three other states have
legalized same-sex marriage, joining Massachusetts and Connecticut, which
had already done so. On April 3, the Iowa Supreme Court, repeatedly citing
California's decision of last May, struck down a state statute that limited
civil marriage to the union of a man and a woman.

Less than a week later, the Vermont legislature narrowly overrode Gov. Jim
Douglas's veto of a bill that allowed same-sex couples to marry.

Then, on May 6, Maine's legislature, too, passed a bill allowing same-sex
marriage, and Gov. John Baldacci promptly signed it.

Initiatives legalizing same-sex marriage are also moving forward in New York
and New Jersey. A similar measure stalled by a slim margin in the New
Hampshire legislature this month but could come up for a new vote in June.
In addition, opinion polls of Americans' attitude toward same-sex marriage
indicate that they favor allowing it.

The sole dissenting vote in Tuesday's decision came from Justice Carlos R.
Moreno, previously mentioned as a possible choice by President Obama for the
United States Supreme Court.

Justice Moreno wrote that Proposition 8 means "requiring discrimination,"
which he said "strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies
our California Constitution" and, he added, "places at risk the state
constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities."


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