California Proposition 8

On the Ballot in California this year will be “Proposition 8″ which in the voter information guide1 is described as follows.

ELIMINATES RIGHT OF SAME-SEX COUPLES TO MARRY. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry in California. Provides that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact on state and local governments.

As I’m sure you know California became the second state to allow gays and lesbians to marry, Iowa was briefly the third. Californian (and national) social conservative groups went into an uproar over this and have decided to come to the defense of marriage. In order to overturn the California Supreme Court a constitutional amendment was proposed to define marriage in the California Constitution. To pass the measure requires only a simple majority.

Wait…. WHAT?! The United States Constitution is incredibly difficult to amend. It has to make it’s way through Congress by a super majority of two thrids of the Congress and then through three fourths of the state legislatures. In California you don’t even require a majority of the populace to weigh in. In theory three people could vote on Proposition 8, two of them for one against and the constitution would be amended2. This isn’t tyranny of the majority here, it’s tyranny of the active minority!

There is a more fundamental issue at work here however. In my understanding of Constitutional Law (that’s US Constitution now) brings to mind the Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; ‘nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’

According to our Constitution, everyone, black, white, male, female, gay, straight is afforded equal protections under the law. You can’t discriminate via legislation or by state constitution. By denying gays and lesbians the ability to marry and enjoy the benefits that the states give to married couples you are discriminating based on a quality of the person. This isn’t a gay right to marriage, it’s a citizen’s right to equal treatment, and I have a great amount of difficulty understanding how people can’t see that.3

  1. California has tons of ballot initiatives so in order to save ballot space they put the information in voter information guides and only list proposition numbers on the ballots. ↩

  2. This is a ridiculous scenario but for example, a more realistic one: 65% of Californians show up to vote only half of them cast a vote on a proposition. 51% of the ones who vote vote to amend the constitution 33% of the voting populace of the state will have just amended the constitution. ↩

  3. Then again people also don’t understand that Roe v. Wade is a case about citizens right to privacy. There is no right to have an abortion. You have a right to privacy that makes abortion laws invasive and thus unconstitutional. It should also be noted that Roe v. Wade isn’t even the controlling case for these matters anymore it’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey. ↩