The Prop 8 Downfall and What is to Come

If you haven’t heard yet, yesterday, Proposition 8, the controversial California ballot initiative that outlawed gay marriage by way of a constructional amendment was overturned by the 9th circuit court. The three judge panel upheld an earlier court’s ruling. Prop 8 supporters have only one place left to go and that is the Supreme Court of the United States. While this is a long time coming, I tell both sides to beware what you wish for.

I say “beware what you wish for” because if the Supreme Court takes the case, I don’t see why they wouldn’t but you never know, whatever they decide will either lay the ground work for same-sex marriages being allowed nationwide and more importantly recognized or will push back the gay rights movement by 20 years or so. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is look at Plessy v. Ferguson which made “separate but equal” the law of the land and Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education, which finally ended legal segregation nearly 60 years later.

Even though the Court is pretty conservative on many decisions, I do believe that they will uphold the decision of the 9th Circuit Court and find that Proposition 8 is indeed unconstitutional. The only reason I could see for them deciding it is constitutional is because of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which allows states to not only making same-sex marriage illegal in the state but it also allows the state to not even recognize a same-sex marriage that was performed in a state that does allow it. I have talked about DOMA on here before as well and I have talked about how DOMA would probably need to be deemed unconstitutional in order to set the stage for same-sex marriage being allowed everywhere.

The United States is supposed to be a place where everyone is supposed to be equal in the eyes of the law. No one is saying that you have to agree with same-sex marriage but can you really say you are a patriot if you would deny even one citizen all the same rights that you have? Here is the main point about Prop 8, and this goes for any other ballot initiative that is like Prop 8, and that is that you cannot put human rights, whether you agree with them or not, up to a vote by the citizenry. I will leave you with a quote from Thomas Jefferson on this issue:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.