Justus For All

The “express will” 8 years ago, before they had a chance to see marriage equality in action in Massachusetts, to mention just one of the changes in the past 8 years.

Marriage is between a man and a woman. Period. There is no such thing as “gay marriage”. It’s like saying “dry water”…

I would add that there really is no ban on gays getting married as long as one is a man and one is a woman…

Karen,

That is true, but I am not sure how relevant it is. I certainly would like to think that a referendum in California would have a different outcome now, but I don’t believe that is the case. In any event, if it is, it would be better that it were done that way.

Jeff,

Marriage is a complex evolving concept whose definitions have, and will, change along with society. At one point, Marriage was mostly a transfer of property as a woman (or more often girl) left the ownership of her father and became the property of another man. We have mostly abandoned that particular concept. At other times it was mostly about economic or political alliances. Now we have all sorts of weird things bound in with our definition of marriage, like romantic love. Marriage means what we chose it to, and for most people it is a union of two people who love each other and want to establish a joint life together. If gays want that, why should we be so oppossed, and how does it hurt us?

As for your second point, I should presume that if you were told you could marry, but only someone of the same sex you would kinda feel like you were being banned from getting married.

I share your concern about courts making this decision. However, it bears noting that the California legislature passed a same-sex marriage in 2005 and Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it on the grounds that the courts should deal with it.

Yes indeed. I have a general view that this sort of decision should be left up to the elected law making offices that directly reflect the will of the people, but when as in this case those bodies have punted the issue over to the courts it is much less clear.

That said, I would have prefered that the courts made it clear to the legislature and the governor that it was their mess to clean up.

I also expect that this will add a lot of momentum to the CA contitutional ammendment (as well as attempts to reform the U.S. constitution) and that is a bad outcome as far as I am concerned. Both these constitutions as they are written should be able to handle this problem just fine, and with plenty of flexibility to properly represent the will of the people. Courts moving this sort of thing into their perview means that laws on the subject now have to be consitutional ammendments, a very unflexible and poor way to handle it.