8

Prop 8 has been upheld in court.

I've been trying to remind myself that if you'd told me ten years ago that same-sex marriage would even be on the table, I'd have been amazed. That the bad guys had to spend a lot of money and tell a lot of lies in order to win. But I'm not finding that comforting today. Not at all. I remember Mark Morford's reaction to the weddings in San Francisco in 2004:

It would have required a serious amount of nasty, inbred ignorance and appalling nerve to march up to any of the passionate and committed couples waiting patiently in line for their marriage ceremony and say, you know, God hates you for this, you immoral disgusting sodomites, and it's intolerable and unacceptable that you wish to love and honor each other till death do you part.

Well, there you have it.

Solarbird notices just how horrific the legal decision really is.

with this initiative being upheld, minority groups of all sort — particularly small ones — should take away this: it's perfectly okay for the majority to fuck you up with one popular vote. If you think you're safe, if you think that can't happen to your little pocket of reality, wake the fuck up, because it can.
....
from the decision, in regards to the state's equal protection clause:

Nor does Proposition 8 fundamentally alter the meaning and substance of state constitutional equal protection principles as articulated in that opinion. Instead, the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights ... Taking into consideration the actual limited effect of Proposition 8 upon the preexisting state constitutional right of privacy and due process and upon the guarantee of equal protection of the laws, we conclude Proposition 8 constitutes a constitutional amendment rather than a constitutional revision. ...

Neither the language of the relevant constitutional provisions, nor our past cases, support the proposition that any of these [constitutional] rights is totally exempt from modification by a constitutional amendment adopted by a majority of the voters through the initiative process.

That includes rights described as “inalienable” by the state constitution itself — quoting the decision again:

The state Constitution does not prohibit constitutional amendments qualifying or restricting rights that the state Constitution describes as “inalienable...”

So “narrow and limited exception[s]” to equal treatment under the law and other “inalienable” constitutional rights are purely a matter of popular vote in California.

Courage Campaign plans to bring it back to the ballot box for a fair fight. I'm not sure how strategically wise or likely to be effective that is, but today I don't care, so I've sent some money and crossed my fingers.