Advertisement

Opinion: Poll sees marriage ban trailing, and other Prop. 8 bits and pieces

Share

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Joe Mathews’ Blockbuster Democracy blog has this link to a Field Poll out this morning showing that Californians are leaning against Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot to restrict marriage to a union between a man and a woman.

If it passes, what would be the effect of the state Supreme Court’s May 15 ruling legalizing marriage for same-sex couples? The court called marriage a fundamental right. Can voters revoke a fundamental right by initiative?

Advertisement

Opponents of Proposition 8 said no, and asked the court to remove the measure from the ballot. On Wednesday, though, the justices declined, without comment.

Los Angeles Superior Court research attorney Kevin Norte has been warning that the court’s failure to act may result in repeated ballot measures to restrict marriage. Even if Proposition 8 fails, he argues, lack of court action to bar similar ballot measures will result in one initiative after another, forever, much like the parental consent/notification measures that Californians have seen three times in the last three years. The latest version, Proposition 4 (also known as Sara’s Law), is on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Norte calls the potential phenomenon the ‘Gay Marriage Industrial Complex.’ Read his quote in the Metropolitan News-Enterprise story.

Meanwhile, there’s an online petition to recall Chief Justice Ron George for the ‘travesty’ in ruling and writing the opinion in the In re Marriage Cases decision, but it’s not an official petition qualified by the secretary of state.

Advertisement