Gay marriage temporarily OK'd in California

California's Republican-dominated Supreme Court ruled today that limiting marriage to a man and a woman is unconstitutional. In L.A., that means the decision will take effect in 30 days, according to the L.A. Times. But then it's going to be temporary -- anti-gay-marriage groups are already circulating petitions to place a question on November's ballot that would amend the state Constitution to define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Last time a gay marriage question went before the voters, in 2000, 61 percent voted to ban it.

What's interesting about the California court is that six of the seven justices were appointed by Republicans. In the decision, the majority writes that this case is different from cases in other states that have banned gay marriage. They emphasize that their decision has nothing to do on policy opinion, but simply whether "the failure to designate the official relationship of
same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution."

You can find the decision here, but read on for excerpts.

It also is important to understand at the outset that our task in this proceeding is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated amarriage rather than a domestic partnership (or some other term), but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution.

Here's a pretty representative part of the decision:

Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, 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, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.

Further, the decision says, calling it a civil union instead of marriage would violate the state's equal protection clause because there's no compelling state interest in different treatment.

Finally, retaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite-sex couples and providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise — now emphatically rejected by this state — that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects “second-class citizens” who may, under the law, be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples.

In a Rehnquist-esque dissent, Justice Marvin Baxter accuses the majority of creating a constitutional right out of "whole cloth." (think back to every anti-abortion opinion on the Supreme Court)

I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference.

Here is the amendment being proposed in the petition by protectmarriage.com, a group of California activists "who believe that marriage’s foremost purpose is the raising of healthy children in a family with a mom and a dad," according to their Web site.

Wow. I write a lot when I don't want to write what I'm supposed to write.