As gay people, we need to recall the cases of Rose Bird, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, all justices of the California State Supreme Court. Their political fates are of import here and now! All were defeated in the election campaign of 1986, because they dared to speak out, and act on the matter of Capital Punishment. They voted no on too many cases brought before the court, in the matter of Capital Punishment. The Social Conservatives removed them from office( Bird by 61% to 39% vote). Why is this germane to our current situation? The Judges on the Supreme Court are afraid of losing their jobs! They are subject to a vote to maintain their offices in the first general election after taking office and every 12 years thereafter. This fear of the power of the Social Conservatives is well founded in the minds of these judges, who presently hold these offices. And we need to recognize the power of removal from office as a real possibility. This is not an excuse for these Judges but a reality check on our disappointment on this decision. The fight has just begun: we are in for a long fight and the Patriarchy will not willing let go its prerogatives. They feel they have a right to prescribe the mode of living for not just LGBT persons but all of the human race. A stunning exercise of hubris!
The Court has now predicated two classes of persons, under the law: gay people married under the old law, which has been found to be unconstitutional, but their marriages have been deemed ‘legal’, and gay persons wishing to marry under the law, but who cannot legally do so.This challenges the concept and practice of equality before the law. Litigation,surely, must follow this glaring legal inconsistency.

The California Ruling was more than appauling. When Federal intervention for LGBT Rights is fought for and won, so too will LGBT Rights become the law of the land.

hippie4ever - I agree wholeheatedly.  The ruling was appalling. 

Last year, the chief justice of the supreme court there carried on in his ruling how the denial of the very use of the word ‘marriage’ for gay unions created a 2nd class distinction. 

Today, he claims denying us the word ‘marriage’ is no big deal because civil unions provides the same rights of marriage (which they clearly do not - in California or anywhere else). 

How does one contradict oneself so blatantly? 

Well, 3 of the 4 who voted the right way last year face re-election in areas that are more conservative, and their jobs were threatened.  The faced campaigns to be voted out of office. 

So, they have now contradicted themselves and diminished their standing as judges. 

This is precisely why supreme court justices should never be elected.  Elected justices are nothing more than politicians, and when elected, they often become a rubber stamp of the majority instead of the protector of the minority. 

The entire episode is appalling. 

I do believe we will get it back on the ballot.  And I do believe we will prevail next time.  But they have set a dangerous and very sad precedent today. 

The opinion of the lone dissenter is how the majority should have voted. 

History will look back on this ruling and consider those who voted to uphold this clearly unconstitutional proposition as cowards of the worst type.  The type that even goes against their own statements of just a year ago.

Hippie-4ever

Don’t give up the fight, and don’t give up on California.  The state initiative and referendum system guarantees that powerful majority passions will run over minority protections once in a great while, especially when rich bigots can bankroll the media campaign needed to distort the issues .... eventually cooler, fairer, more humane heads will prevail, in California and in the US as a whole.

We’re not there yet, but surely there is cause for hope.

California has become a farce. I don’t whether to laugh or cry: I’ve been written into law as an inferior person, but considering the source, well…

California’s become a Third World nation without human rights guarantees or properly funded social services; but it has a devastated economy and a population best described as marginally educated. Think “Mexico” and you’ve the general idea. To think I left France to come back to this…sewer of organised religion.

The legacy is the absolute right of a majority to vote out the human rights of a minority. That’s what the Prop 8 people were hoping to accomplish & mostly they succeeded; their next target will be the 18,000 couples married when it was legal. What an evil, despicable society California’s become.