In 2000, 61 percent of California voters supported a ballot initiative that declared: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Then, in May of 2008, four of the seven state supreme court justices ruled that this ballot initiative violated the California state constitution.
So, in November of 2008, 52.2 percent of California voters then decided to change their state's constitution, so it explicitly said: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
Today, U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the people of California do not have the right to ban same-sex marriage in their state constitution. Walker declared the amendment, known as Proposition 8, is not "rational," and therefore the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage:
Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The ruling, which can be found here, will be appealed. As for the judge's opinion that restricting marriage to opposite-sex coules isn't rational, Ace writes:
The argument offered by those seeking to keep Prop 8 in place was, actually, my preferred argument: The state does not have an interest in propagating love. It has an interest only in fostering stable families (meaning: with children). Straight marriage is directly implicated by this interest, since most married couples have children. Gay marriage is irrelevant to this interest, since few gay couples have children (and none, of course, naturally by the couple itself).
The Court claimed this was a post-hoc rationalization, and, in any case, "irrational." [...]
This ruling is not restricted, except by circumstance of the case, to California.
Whole post here.
