The Ban Stands

This just in...

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – California's supreme court backed a ban on gay marriage on Tuesday, ruling six-to-one that a voter-approved proposition defining marriage as between a man and a woman could stand.

The court, which last year unexpectedly opened the door to same-sex unions in the most populous U.S. state, bowed to the rule of the majority of California voters who passed the ban known as Proposition 8 last November.

But the court also said the roughly 18,000 marriages that took place in the state before the November ban remained valid since the ban was not retroactive.

(You can read the full report here)

How sad, but I knew this would be the outcome. Now two fights will brew over the next campaign cycle, one from each side... one, to reverse Prop 8 (that is, another California constitutional amendment), and two, to nullify the existing gay marriages that have been allowed to stand since California does not recognize marriage outside of the heterosexual definition.

Think of what this has created in a supposedly "liberal" state. California is not liberal in any known sense of the word. As I said at the BBQ Sunday, California is not liberal, it's loony. We have Prop 13 but then we have communities with Mello-Roos attached to get around Prop 13. We now have a set of circumstances where a small subset of same-sex couples are married but no more can be. We have married gays in this state, but the state does not acknowledge same-sex marriage from any other state. This isn't liberal, this is split-personality if not outright schizophrenia.