A Federal Appeals court in struck down California Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage ruling that the law violated the due process and equal protection clause of the Constitution. As Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote in the majority opinion, “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”
In response to Judge Reinhardt’s eloquent defense of the majority ruling – Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich blasted the decision – calling for it to be ultimately decided in the Supreme Court. In a few years – it will be very clear who’s on the wrong side of history on this issue.
Comments
In order to pre-emptively discredit what will undoubtedly be the main objection regarding this discussion raised by those conservatives who frequent this site, namely that the Court's decision thwarts the "will of the people", they should understand that the decision makes clear that the people of the state were mistaken to believe, considering the nature of what they voted on, that any such authority to decide such a thing ever did exist. Before wasting time stating opinions based on faulty assumptions, participants in this conversation would be well advised to go to C-SPAN,com and familiarize themselves with the actual oral arguments so that they don't waste time repeating themes that have already been successfully challenged.
The outcome of the panel's decision might be desirible, but the panel's legal reasoning is extremely problematic. Rather than decide proposition 8 unconstituional under the 14th amendment (which would, likely, have forced the SCOTUS to finally decide on the issue), they reasoned that:
"[P]roposition 8 singles out a class of citizens for disfavored legal status....[The] Proposition has the peculiar property of withdrawing from homosexuals, but no others, an existing legal right--here, access to the official designation of marriage--that had been broadly available notwithstanding the fact that the Constitution did not compel the state to confer it in the first place." [J. Reinhardt][emphasis added].
This is a gross violation of the separation of powers. The 9th is using circular reasoning to empower the judiciary to legislate from the bench. The Ca. Constitution never originally provided gay mariage as a right to its citizens. That right was interpretted to exist in the state's constitution by the California Supreme Court (it was not created through legislation). After the court made this decision, the citizens of California voted to amend their constituion to exclude the court's interpretation. However, this court's holding asserts that a court's interpretation of a constitution is infallible and unredressable by the people. How can a democratic society thrive under such broad judicial powers.
This decision should and, most likely, will be overturned. I support equality for homosexuals, but not at the expense of democratic principles. This decision could have finally forces the Supreme Court to address the issue of gay marriage on equal protection grounds. Unfortunately, Reinhardt, et al. did not have the stones to decide it on equal protection grounds. They should be ashamed of their cowardice.
(@mdhess: btw, oral arguements aren't reliable indicators of a court's decision. Legally speakng, the court's holding is the only thing that matters--and this is a very poor holding.)
Joyce, there is no right to vote contrary to the human rights and civil rights of other citizens. These rights exist, and it is the job of the law to recognize them. You would have segregation be subject to a majority vote. I think the establishment of prejudice and bigotry is always wrong and it is not about popular opinion. We can recognize that ignorance and prejudice will cause unjust suffering and when it is supported by purported science or "biblical authority," it will be established against the truth and all legitimacy. We have had to take an awfully long time to expose the lies about homosexuality, but none of that crap has turned out to have a grain of truth. Just like theories of racial superiority and inferiority.
If my civil rights depend upon a popular vote instead of being "inherent," they are not "rights" and do become favors granted by a majority. This is nonsense. It is why conscience is not to be constrained by dogma in civil life. It does not matter what the Catholics, Mormons or Presbyterians believe about the Bible or revealed truth. It is what clear and present danger can be established in fact, and women had to have the same nonsense exposed in their struggle for equality.
The 9th not only held that repealing 'granted rights' was wrong, they made the case that there was no basis for laws against gay marriage and civil equality in the first place. Prejudice does not have a right to have legal standing. The fact that we need laws to reject prejudice is indication of an unjust injury extant. It was wrong in the first place.
DRC, I agree with you. There is no right to jeopardize a groups equal protection rights by popular vote. But that is not how the 9th ruled. The 9th did not hold that there was no basis for laws against gay marriage. In fact, Reinhardt deliberately and spinelessly avoided that holding, saying:
"Whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry . . . is an important and highly controversial question. . . . We need not and do not answer this broader question in this case, however, because California had already extended to committed same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of 'marriage,' and Proposition 8's only effect was to take away that important and legally significant designation." [J. Reinhardt] [emphasis added].
Instead of deciding the case on equal protection, the 9th held that the decision in Romer v. Evans precluded the state from removing a right from a segment of people, that was already given. Romer invalidated an Amendment that sought to repeal a series of legislative acts which recognized gays as a prtected class. In the present case, there was no legislative law being repealed. Instead, the people of California amended their constitution to nullify a judicial interpretation recognizing the gay marriage as a right through the ca constituion. By deciding this case based on Romer, the 9th effectively said that the judiciary--an undemocratically elected body of government--has the right to create law. As I have previously said, this is terrible legal reasoning.
Reinhardt was clearly hedging his bets when he wrote this oppinion. It is sad, becuase even if this case goes up to the Supreme Court, and the court decides in favor of Reinhardt's decision (very unlikely, no matter what "legal experts" the msm finds to say otherwise) the holding will have little impact on the gay community as a whole. Reinhardt had a golden opprotunity to nationally extend the right to marriage to gays and he blew it.
I have listened to the lawyers who brought the case and they say that the court's opinion included finding no basis for the abrogation of equal rights for gay and lesbian citizens in the first place, not just when it has been passed. Courts take the narrowest position possible in ruling because that is how they avoid the judicial activism the Right practices and then blames on the liberals like the 9th Circuit.