California court lets gay marriage ban stand | U.S. | Reuters
AN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California’s supreme court backed a ban on gay marriage on Tuesday, ruling that a voter-approved proposition defining marriage as between a man and a woman could stand in the trend-setting state.
Told you so. And, frankly, given the law, I don’t see how else it could have been decided.
The court, which last year opened the way for same-sex unions, said the roughly 18,000 marriages that took place before the November ban could stand.
This doesn’t make any sense. Gay marriage is not legal, except for the 18,000 couples with enough foresight to get married before the deadline?
Still, as I said previously, this will all be moot within five years.
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Did California’s constitution have a “definition” of marriage as being only between a man and a woman before Prop 8? If not, that would explain the exception for the 18,000 same sex couples. Cali Supremes would essentially interpret that before Prop 8, there was no actual legal definition of marriage, and that while gay marriage wasn’t allowed under statute, it wasn’t disallowed either, under the constitution. Prop 8 changed that by creating a specific legal definition of marriage in California. Instead of invalidating existing same sex marriages (whew!), they seem to be basically saying that it was California’s fault for not having a specific definition (wink, wink…).
This turned out exactly like I thought it would, and I agree with Bill that within 5 years, it’ll be moot.