On May 15, 2008, four California Supreme Court Justices made history! They overturned a ban on same sex marriages as voted on by California residents in 2000, known as Proposition 22. This proposition explicitly defined marriage as being a union between a man and a woman. Not that this is anything new; this has been the only definition for a long time. The court’s decision was 4:3 with Chief Justice Ronald George, Justice Joyce Kennard, Justice Carlos Moreno and Justice Kathryn Werdegar voting to overturn the previous law banning same-sex marriages. The other 3 justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan voted to uphold the previous law.
Chief Justice George stated in his written opinion that “Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation.” The opinion against this law change as written by Justice Marvin Baxter stated “Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage – an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law – is no longer valid.”
There you have it, folks. Judicial activism at work and where else but in California! The state has already laws providing for civil unions between same-sex partners, but that was insufficient in the eyes and minds of the four justices who felt that by denying gays and lesbians the right to marry was discriminatory. Chief Justice George wrote in his opinion “Allowing same-sex marriage will not harm heterosexual couples – but blocking gays and lesbians from marriage does hurt them” and he added “tradition alone could not be used to justify denial of a fundamental constitutional right.”
When we title this article the ‘Slippery Slope to de-Valuation’ we identify this to be just the beginning for these judicial activists. The capacity to love and care for a partner and to raise children should not stop here and we in a cynical way like to present the following scenarios:
What if a man falls in love with twins (or for that matter triplets) and he has the capacity and financial ability to care for these women, why should he be denied his constitutional right to pursue his happiness and be allowed to marry those twins (or triplets)? While there is a separation of church and state in the American Constitution, that should not prevent these justices from deciding laws on the basis of Islamic law where a man can marry more than one woman. For instance, what if a man from Saudi Arabia immigrates to America and he has three wives, should he have to divorce two of them in order to live here? We think not and therefore; should any man be denied the right to be married to more than one woman? Why should there be laws against polygamy? The same would hold true for any other combination, why should a wealthy woman be denied the right to marry two, three or more men at the same time.
Now then, let’s take this one more step into the absurd: If, the basis for this law is love and caring for someone else and civil rights, how long will it be before someone loves his dog or cat so much (or we should say more than anyone else on earth) that he or she will be requesting to marry his or her dog or cat? We know this is totally without any common sense and to make it perfectly clear, we are totally against such nonsense, but are we not allowed to ask the question? When four justices in California can overturn the will of the people in such an arrogant and flagrant way, what would keep them from continuing in this direction by devaluing everything that was part of societies for thousands of years and therefore the foundation of humanity?
We here at Consider Common Sense believe this to be a slippery slope and fear that this action by the four members of the California Supreme Court will not be the last. As long as there are special interest groups in this state and lawyers trying to make names for themselves, there will be more attempts to undermine our societal laws and rules by which we have lived for such a long time and which have been the foundation of our constitution. Attempts to legitimize polygamy will most likely be next but then, what do we know? Maybe reparations to gays and lesbians for having been denied for many years the right to marry could also be next and based on this ruling by the California “Supremes”, they would probably have a strong case and might get paid for their prior ‘suffering’.
It is a slippery slope and future attempts by the voters of California to reverse this decision by way of another proposition will be most likely fruitless. The only true remedy we see would be to deal with these four justices the way California voters dealt over twenty years ago with Chief Justice Rose Bird when she and two other justices, Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin, were ousted from their jobs for their categorical opposition to the death penalty! Current Chief Justice George is up for election in 2010 and it remains to be seen what other decisions he will reach against the will of the people.