Reply #83: You don't understand what happened...

[AntiFascist]

Prop 8 was approved for signature gathering last year. In the meantime, we had the CA marriage ruling which made gay marriage legal, and it also declared that marriage is a Fundamental Right and that gays and lesbians are a protected group ('suspect classification' in legalise). Then, when enough signatures were gathered, Prop. 8 was submitted to the Sec of State to be put on the ballot. At that point, Lambda Legal sued to have the measure removed from the ballot because they were arguing, in light of the Marriage Ruling, that Prop. 8 should be a Revision to the constitution not an amendment, in which case it would have to go through the legislature first. The court decided not to rule on this issue at that time, because it is customary, once a measure is on the ballot, to allow it to be voted upon first. That way, if it gets defeated, then the court doesn't have to interfere. Obviously the measure wasn't defeated, so now the court is once again in the position of having to rule whether Prop 8 is a Revision or an amendment to the state constitution. Unfortunately, there is also a law that says propositions go into effect the day after the election, so we are in a wierd position of having to live with an amendment, temporarilly, that probably should not be valid, but because of the timing of the Marriage Ruling, it slipped in.

On edit: I very much blame the mass media idiots for trying to sell Prop. 8 the way they did as conclusively passing in California. Now, when and if it gets overturned, they will either have a lot of backtracking to do, or in the case of Fox News, make it appear as if activist courts are interfering with the will of the people, which is not the case when you analyze the filings.