Supreme Overreach

A Field Poll revealed that for the first time in the history of the state, a majority of Californians approve of allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex… who else would they marry? By a 51 to 42 margin, Californians are cool with the concept and as the graph below shows, the gap had been closing steadily since the mid-80s all of which bolsters our contention that the California State Supreme Court overstepped its jurisdiction.

Here’s the money paragraph from the Court’s majority opinion: “As past cases establish, the substantive right of two adults who share a loving relationship to join together to establish an officially recognized family of their own… constitutes a vitally important attribute of the fundamental interest in liberty and personal autonomy that the California Constitution secures to all persons for the benefit of both the individual and society.”

We searched high and low in the California Constitution for a substantive right to establish an officially recognized family and found nothing of the sort. And if you’re going the connect-the-dots route of linking gay marriage to the right of liberty and personal autonomy, we find that free ice cream every night, free (disease-free) love and a free Humvee setting in our driveway is a substantive right by virtue of our constitutionally protected liberty and autonomy.

We tried to slog through the rest of the opinion but couldn’t because, well… it was written by lawyers. We take that back - it was worse. It was written by lawyers turned family counselors… “…retaining the traditional definition of marriage and affording same-sex couples only a separate and differently named family relationship will, as a realistic matter, impose appreciable harm on same-sex couples and their children, because denying such couples access to the familiar and highly favored designation of marriage is likely to cast doubt on whether the official family relationship of same-sex couples enjoys dignity equal to that of opposite-sex couples."




Pure conjecture. Chief Justice Ronald M. George offers no evidence to support what is solely his own subjective feeling in the manner.

Look, this is all about a definition. Its about a definition of a term the voters felt one way about for many years and do not appear to do so any longer. As we’ve said, we’re not for same-sex marriages but we’re far more opposed to judges determining the scope of definitions when contrary to public opinion especially when its based on such flimsy logic.

We would have zero problem if the same language from Prop. 22 were put on the ballot in November and the people of California said yes to gay marriage. We wouldn’t like it. We would still have our narrow, traditional concept of marriage but similar to our hang-up with the abortion debate as it relates to Roe v. Wade, we would be satisfied that at least the laws under which we live were a result of the democratic process and not judges fashioning rights out of thin air.