**  UPDATE 5/26 **

I preminisced correctly, but it appears as if I preminisced wrong.

Let me limn that out a bit.

Although the court split 6-1 on the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the justices were unanimous in deciding to keep intact the marriages of as many as 18,000 gay couples who exchanged vows before the election. The marriages began last June, after a 4-3 state high court ruling striking down the marriage ban last May.

Yes, Virginia; to the L.A. Times, 6-1 is a "split." 'Nuff said.

Although the SCOCA upheld Proposition 8 as a legitimate constitutional amendment, the court cannily (and, I think, callously) upheld the legitimacy of it's 4-man majority "marriages;" 18,000 or so couples now exiled to limbo.

I maintain that the court hopes this is a temporary limbo, for the "good of the state." I think the plan is to use those couples as a crowbar on the constitution. Wait a few years, and — if the good citizens of the state do not fall into line — overrule Prop 8 in the interests of those couples (the ones remaining married at the time) and their "civil rights."

I'd ask you to mark my words, but what good would it do, either way?

I suppose I will at least slog through an abstract of the 185-page blahblahblah issued by the SCOCA to support its ruling. But I am willing to bet, again, that no mention of science, evolutionary design, or innate sexual differences, or religion, or history, or sociology, play any part in the ruling. For example, note:

Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar, a former civil rights lawyer who also joined last year's ruling in favor of marriage rights, wrote separately because she disagreed with the majority's definition of a constitutional revision.

"The drafters of our Constitution never imagined, nor would they have approved, a rule that gives the foundational principles of social organization in free societies, such as equal protection, less protection from hasty, unconsidered change than principles of government organization," she wrote.

Observe: no mention is made of "heterosexual marriage, with the possibility of the production of genetically-descended offspring of the couple, living together as a family unit" as a foundational principle of social organization. It is, evidently, so foundational that it escapes Justice Werdegar's notice, in favor of the vastly more modern "foundational principle" she espouses.

Well. As to their citing of history, anthropology, biology, etc., etc., if I find out differently, I'll be happy to let you know in a further update. But I'm not holding my breath.

Suffice to say that this is the second time I've had to eat my rather gloomy words. Again, too early have I pronounced the death of my own point-of-view.

** END UPDATE **


The Disposition of Proposition 8 (CA, 2008)  by State Court

This journey, for me, started here, and continued with the text of the Proposition in its entirety here, and this series just before the election, and this series of posts , including a 3-part reply to Keith Olbermann's editorial, shortly thereafter. I think it is sometimes useful to see how introspection can shape and hone one's viewpoint, on anything. This series of essays is but one man's example in one area. Vive la contemplation! ;o/


I am hoisting a lone, cold one in contemplative silence (cheers). Here's to a time when rather unpleasant facts were not set aside merely because they were unpleasant.

Somehow, the emphasis has shifted from the noun to the adjective.

One final puzzle remains (he said, gazing into his half-full glass), a puzzle most legislatures and courts will not come within cannon-shot of, let alone ponder:

Homosexual "marriage," if one will allow the phrase, is in large part predicated on the assumption that men and women are not only equal in dignity and humanity, but essentially the same. Put another way, the modern assumption is that there are no significant differences between men and women.

This idea is itself another flight in the face of millenia of accumulated societal wisdom. But — as an idea — it has no legal proscription, and therefore (like assertions that men have never landed on the moon, or that people are essentially part of the animal kingdom) has been allowed to spread and fester.

Accept that idea (mostly because you have never been married, or had a sibling of the opposite sex, or because you heard it a lot of times) and homosexual "marriage" becomes almost a given. I can see that.

But there are differences. Indeed, homosexuality itself is built on that premise. If there are not — then why are there homosexuals to begin with? If a man's as good as a woman's as good as a man in all important aspects — then what's the fuss all about? But there are homosexuals, and heterosexuals. Rarely are there bisexuals. That in itself is commentary on the distinctiveness between the sexes.

Chromosomal distinctions, at base, not merely genetic ones, like race or ethnicity, or predisposition to left-handedness.*

That distinction, that awesome and ridiculous and wonderful and laughed-at distinction, is upon what the definition of "marriage" is based.

What are you thinking? What were we thinking? That we would attempt to cover up aeons with our bare hands, to save the feelings of a few?

We should have stuck with state-approved "household partnerships."

(drains the glass, sits slumped, now staring off into space for a spell)

Well.

Cheers.



*thus falls the "civil rights" argument, equating homosexual "marriage" with interracial marriage.