Yep. You read that right. The California Supreme Court, which, according to this article is “Republican-dominated,” overturned the state marriage laws which prohibited same sex marriage.
The California Supreme Court has six Republican appointees and one Democrat. Scholars have described the court under the leadership of Chief Justice Ronald M. George as cautious and moderately conservative.
Wow. That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think?
Can we trade some of our Virginia Republicans for some California ones? 😉
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
As an example, just this January, Schwarzenegger appointed six justices, four Democrats and two Republicans.
Anon E. Mouse – vjp has a point. Reversing MB initials is juvenile. Waste of time anyway. If all you are trying to do is get his goat, the mere fact your opinion disagrees with his seems to bother him more than anything else you might say.
You guys never let me have any fun. 😦
I have emailed the author of the article, and will let you know her response.
Vivian — I notice you do not chastise MB for ad hominem attacks. Interesting.
Mouse – last warning. You’ve gotten beyond tiresome. Either add productively to the discussion or find another sandbox. You started it with the BM stuff. And you have no idea what conversations I’ve had with MB (who, unlike you, doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym).
His name is MB? How unusual.
Has anyone considered that what we really need is separation of marriage and State?
The legal perks of marriage should be available to everyone in the form of a civil union, for any couple regardless of gender.
But marriage itself should be a social construct supported by church, family, community, bowling league or whatever group the couple chooses to make their promises before and on whose social support they will rely.
Don, if you can put together a successful campaign convincing the public of that, I will support it wholeheartedly.
~
Tom, I hate to spoil your weekend plans, but I don’t have any livestock available to you. If you want my attention, you should: 1) have an honest and relevant argument, supported by facts, or; 2) be funny. This, of course, is why we have so little to say to each other. I will admit that there is a third avenue, and it involves posting mind-bendingly stupid things in public fora, but I’m working on being a little more selective, there.
I think this is sickening! The voters of CA don’t want gay marriage and some renegade liberal court overules the will of the voters! Marriage is between a man and a woman, not a flamer and a flamer!
California’s legislature twice approved a bill providing for same sex marriage. Twice it was vetoed by a governor saying that it was an issue to be decided by the CA Supreme Court. CA’s Supreme Court decided this case in a manner that was consistent with past decisions.
Getting government out of the marriage business just makes sense.
MB – Have you considered what your insults reveal about you? Try to consider yourself objectively. If you saw someone who felt the need to hurt someone else in such an adolescent fashion, what you would you think about them? Pity?
Don – Your idea is interesting, but what you propose accomplishes the exact opposite of what you intend. The primary reason we need government is to protect people’s rights. Neither marriage nor civil unions are a right. Marriage is about responsibility. When a couple marries, the couple acknowledges the responsibilities that may arise from sexual intercourse between a man and woman. To make its own job of protecting children easier, our government “rewards” a married couple with the legal recognition of their union.
Civil unions, since they would primarily involve same-sex couples, creates more problems for government than they resolve. Without extraordinary efforts, same-sex couples do not produce children. So the state has no practical need to get involved. In fact, the only “practical” reason the state has for becoming involved breaks the barrier between church and state. By recognizing civil unions, the state lends its sanctification to a type of relationship that most people consider sinful.
While you may disagree and think same-sex unions are perfectly OK, the question remains. What reason do you have for imposing your opinion on everyone else? Why are civil unions something government needs to worry about? Children? Where do these children come from? Why should the government encourage people to have children in such a fashion?
Tom – I know I’ll never convince you of this but marriage really isn’t about sex or about procreation. If it were, we would outlaw sex outside of marriage and not allow folks who can’t have children to marry. Religion can impose these restrictions on what relationships they will recognize but the government – which supposedly represents all – should not be in the marriage business.
And, truth be told, the government isn’t in the marriage business. The government is in the civil union business. One can be married without a license issued by the government and yes, some people chose that route, just as others chose the civil union route, ie, no religious ceremony and only a license. So let’s call it what it is: the government sanctions civil unions and in doing so, creates a situation whereby one class of citizens is treated differently from the other. And that’s what the CA decision essentially says.
vjp – I sympathize with your point of view, but I think it ignores quite a bit of history. In addition, the CA decision is immoral. It is an open secret that the CA court overstepped its authority. The CA court knows that it did so, but it will never admit it. Advocates for homosexual rights know that it did so, but they never admit it. Instead, the court and the advocates want to talk about the righteous of the decision. The irony of that is so strange and yet so typical of our day.
Mankind is an experiment. American society is an experiment. Since our creation human beings have been trying to figure what it means to be an intelligent, self-aware life form. Why do we exist? What is good? What is bad? In the frenzy of our experiments, we sometimes discard the wisdom of the past. We sometimes advocate things our forebears would have thought plainly foolish. We arrogantly perceive that what those in the past believed was simply foolish and ignorant. We sometimes even forget the world did not begin at the date of our birth.
Consider the past. Marriage was not consumated without sex. Before birth control, people had large families. People did outlaw sex outside of marriage. People of the same sex, who cannot even conceive children, were not allowed to marry. Because morality is based upon religion, government and religion have alway been interwined in Law. In fact, most of what I just said is still true in large portions of the world.
But to the average American, the “real world” ceases to exist at our borders. What makes us unique? The success of our Republic only partly based on the fact that our government represents us all. What has made our nation truly successful is how restrained our government tends to be. Our government focuses on protecting the right of individuals to make their own decisions. This right of decision includes most of the relationships we form. Where we each work, where we live, what we buy and sell, who we spend our time with…, these are decisions we make for ourselves. With relatively few exceptions, our government does not intervene in much of anything we do. Those exceptions largely occur when the perception exists that someone’s rights need to be protected. Unlike so many governments in the past, our govenment rarely permits one group to impose its beliefs on the rest of us.
Children are the weakest amongst us. Parents are their greatest advocates and protection. Marriage is the institution whereby parents afford children their protection. Marriage is not an institution that exists to certify and protect various types of sexual relationships.
What is the threat to children? There are those interested in shaping the future. For these people children are the most valuable commodity in the world. What some people will do to control impressionable young minds is an abomination. Have you ever heard of the Janissaries, for example? Read about how the Janissaries were first recruited (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janissary). Yet compared to modern child soldiers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children), especially those sad recruits in some parts of Africa, the Sultans treated their Janissaries quite well.
The cornerstone of our nation is the family. We recognize that Mothers and Fathers love their children far more than anyone else is likely to. Because we protect the family, that is why most adults in our nation cherish the memory of the people who raised them. For the sake of future generations, we must protect the rights of parents and the institution of marriage from foolish experimentation.
Tom – where we differ is that you want to impose your morality on everyone else. Sorry, but in my mind, government is not the morality police. Let’s leave that up to the churches. Or, better yet, let’s leave that between an individual and his/her relationship with the God that they worship.
I agree that our government is supposed to represent us all – and that they should be protecting the rights of all of us, especially the rights of minorities. When the government decides that one group can have a civil union and another group cannot, it is not protecting the interests of all, it is not representing all.
Allowing gay people to have civil unions – just like straight people – gets us closer to that ideal.
And that’s the part that you guys just don’t get. If everyone is allowed to have civil unions, what will effect will it have on the so-called “nuclear family”? None. Will there be any more children in who don’t have parents? No; in fact, I’d venture to say that there might just be more children who are raised in loving homes.
I’m not living in the past. In the past, it was OK to own slaves. In the past, women were considered property. In the past, blacks and whites were unable to marry. All those things were considered moral, too – at one time.
And that’s just the recent past.
What about all those black kids, who grew up seeing their families torn apart? What about all the little girls who grew up seeing their mothers mistreated? What effect do you think those “moral” rules had on them? See, it really isn’t about the children – it’s about the tyranny of the majority. Our country is supposed to protect us from that.
As the great, great grandaughter of a slave, I’m pretty happy that those who came before me understood that those things simply weren’t right and did what was necessary to make change.