Two topics dominate today's Opinion pages: the California Supreme Court's validation of Proposition 8, and President Barack Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. The editorial board said the debate prompted by the Prop. 8 and the subsequent appeal has helped persuade lawmakers in other states to legalize gay marriage. The challenge for proponents in California, the board said, is to conduct a better campaign for legalization here:

Civil rights groups should be focusing their time and money on reaching out to moderate voters with information that quells misdirected fears. Contrary to what the pro-Proposition 8 ads implied, no religious group ever lost tax-exempt status over refusal to perform same-sex weddings; San Francisco students who attended their lesbian teacher's wedding had the written endorsements of their parents; gay marriage will not be forced into the California schools curriculum; and faith-based adoption agencies will continue to operate.

Columnist Tim Rutten, meanwhile, focused on the ruling itself, calling the justices' reasoning "intellectually and morally incoherent":

So, if a majority of Californians voted to "carve out a narrow exception" to California's right to privacy and applied it only to Jews, would it be constitutionally acceptable? If Native Americans were accorded all the protections of the law by a ballot proposition, except the right to marry a non-Indian, would that be legal?

This is social and moral nonsense.

Regarding Obama's Supreme Court pick, the editorial board likened Sotomayor to 2005 nominee John Roberts (whom the board supported). Her point of view wouldn't be confused with his, the board said, but she also fits "squarely within the tradition" of nominees with excellent legal credentials and views that "fall within the mainstream." On the Op-Ed side of the fold, Rutgers University professor David Greenberg speculates that Obama's choice of Sotomayor was so politically shrewd, it may have "checkmated" conservative opponents. (Backing Greenberg's thesis, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee all but ruled out a filibuster.)

Rounding out the pages, author David Wolman offers an entertaining history of American spelling rules. And readers weigh in on small cows, shrunken education budgets, reduced spending on military cargo planes and a life cut tragically short in Vernon.

Credit: AP Photo / Alex Brandon 

Public officials come out of the woodwork to comment on high-profile news events, such as the California Supreme Court upholding Proposition 8. Maybe they figure the public eagerly awaits the mail carrier's opinion on the matter; more likely, they're simply establishing their alliances.

Among an inbox stuffed with such statements today, one of the odder emails  comes from Monica Garcia, president of the Los Angeles Unified School District board.

"And for the hundreds of thousands of LAUSD students, [the court's decision is] a lesson that reverberates in the home and through the hallways, where bullies teasing students over their sexual orientation will continue with impunity."

That sentence begs for a second and third reading. Proposition 8 has nothing to do with schools or what happens in their hallways. The L.A. school board, which Garcia heads, has everything to do with it. Surely the district's anti-bullying policies forbid harassment of gay and lesbian students. Garcia's memo, by predicting that this bullying will continue, in essence tells us that this bullying has been going on "with impunity." And the reason she cannot stop it is because of a state Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage?

Commenting today on Proposition 8? Fine. But it sounds like tomorrow, Garcia has some major work to do enforcing the policies in her school district. The Proposition 8 ruling constitutes a sad day for same-sex couples, but it can't be blamed for chaos in L.A. Unified's hallways.

Photograph by Damian Dovarganes/AP

Oh, man up.

Pageant officials should just have yanked the Miss California USA crown away from Carrie Jean Prejean.

Now they've been bigfooted by pageant owner Donald Trump, who ruled today that Prejean can keep her crown after all, in spite of semi-topless photos that he said he didn't have a problem with [no surprise], and her ''very, very honest answer'' to the ''very tough'' question of same-sex marriage. [She's against it.]

California pageant officials had earlier bowed to The Donald, even though, as they said, Prejean evidently breached her contract by not being available to deliver the Miss California USA message to the world, whatever it is.

What she had been preaching instead was her opposition to gay marriage, and preaching it to her new choir of fans, supposedly including Sarah Palin, and like-minded people who, according to a California pageant official, insulated Prejean with ''handlers and advisers.'' Now everyone's supposedly kissed and made up. Today's announcement by Trump also means that if Prejean wants to speak out on same-sex marriage, as opposed to, as she quaintly put it, ''opposite marriage,'' she has to go through pageant officials.

[I've been thinking that the Miss America pageant reps must be livid. By now most people must wrongly believe this Miss California is part of the Miss America pageant -- which prides itself as a scholarship program -- rather than what she is, a state title-holder within Miss USA, which is a beauty pageant owned by Trump. Surely a Miss California candidate for Miss America would be smart enough never, ever to open her pretty yap enough to say what she thinks about gay marriage. I believe one Miss America, decades ago, was asked which of the presidential candidates was better looking -- Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy. She demurely demurred.]

Prejean gets to keep her crown and title. As a consolation to the runner-up who would have inherited the bling and the bragging rights, California officials gave the backup beauty queen the portfolio of ''Beauty of California Ambassador.'' Lousy title. Put it on a pageant ribbon and it'd be too big even to swag across Dolly Parton's chest. 

Just give her the backup crown -- there must be one, like a backup Air Force One -- and her own title: Near-Miss California.

Credit: Timothy A. Clary / AFP / Getty Images

It's been a while since Letters has received mail about gay marriage -- literally, the No. 1 topic of discussion on our pages in 2008.  But the Iowa Supreme Court's decision Friday to strike that state's gay marriage ban got folks writing again.

The Times reported that some Proposition 8 opponents were taking heart from the decision.  But Branden Lewiston, of Indianola, Iowa, cautioned against overexuberance:

The Times' article regarding the legalization of gay marriage in Iowa is excellent reporting, but it is crucial we remain careful going forward and don't assume that the battle for gay marriage in Iowa has been won.

Although the Iowa Constitution and the courts have made gay marriage possible, I would wager that gay marriage still does not have popular support in Iowa. There is still a risk that gay Iowans could lose their right to gay marriage.

After being legal for six months in California, gay marriage was overturned by the people through Proposition 8.

Gay-marriage activists must remain committed to keeping gay marriage in Iowa and achieving it in other states. This has been a major victory for gay rights, but the battle is far from over.

Edward Ruttenberg, of Rancho Palos Verdes, saw another reason for Californians to contain their jubilation:

So California, which has always prided itself for standing at the forefront of enlightened thinking and the protection of civil rights, now finds itself unable to keep up with Iowa.

Letters about new nozzles for filling stations, anorexia, a flogging by the Taliban in Pakistan and the dimming of the "Guiding Light," too.

Photo: Celebrating the Iowa Supreme Court decision last Friday.  Credit: David Greedy/Getty Images.

Perhaps, but it'll be a much tougher battle for gay marriage foes in the Hawkeye State to amend their constitution in the name of enshrining "tradition." First, the news: Where justices of California's Supreme Court were split last May, Iowa's were unanimous:

Supreme Court Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the unanimous decision, at one point invoked the court’s first-ever decision, in 1839, which struck down slavery laws 17 years before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of a slave owner to treat a person as property.

Iowa’s gay marriage ban “is unconstitutional, because the county has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage,” Cady wrote in the 69-page opinion that seemed to dismiss the concept of civil unions as an option for gay couples.

“A new distinction based on sexual orientation would be equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution,” Cady wrote.

The ruling, however, also addressed what it called the “religious undercurrent propelling the same-sex marriage debate,” and said judges must remain outside the fray.

Some Iowa religions are strongly opposed to same-sex marriages, the justices noted, while some support the notion.

“Our constitution does not permit any branch of government to resolve these types of religious debates and entrusts to courts the task of ensuring that government avoids them,” the opinion says.

I appreciate the religious angle of Cady's opinion: The morality of gay marriage is essentially a debate among religious groups, and the Iowa government and courts are barred by law from settling such disputes.

What happens now? Like gay Californians did between May and November 2008, will same-sex couples in Iowa have to rush to the altar (or, more likely, the courthouse) to tie the knot with a traditional-marriage revolt looming at the voting booth? Hardly. According to the Des Moines Register article linked above, Iowa requires more than the momentary populist backlash needed in California to put a law beyond judicial review by passing a constitutional amendment. Changing the Iowa constitution requires that a proposed amendment be approved in two consecutive state legislative sessions before going to the voters. At the earliest, voters could overrule the Iowa high court's decision in 2012. California's same-sex couples had a six-month window to get marriage; Iowa's will have several times' that.

So we finally get a true gay-marriage laboratory in America -- and in a state that voted for George W. Bush in 2004, the year in which the former president called for a so-called marriage-protection amendment to the U.S. Constitution. If a gay-marriage ban does go up for a vote in Iowa, it'll be interesting to see whether heartland voters who've actually lived with same-sex unions for a while are more comfortable with marriage equality than we left-coasters were last November.

In Wednesday's Letters to the editor, readers sound off on a Times editorial questioning, "Does Antonin Scalia hate gays?"

Keith Keilman, of Mountain View, thinks so:

What does a Supreme Court justice have to do before The Times will give permission to use the word "homophobe" -- comparing homosexuals to murderers and ruling that they should be labeled criminal isn't enough?

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) should be praised for having the courage and wisdom to correctly point out Antonin Scalia's homophobia.

And, you know what, I don't need The Times' permission. Scalia is a homophobe.

San Francisco's Michael P. Clarke has another take:

Your editorial, like Frank, fails to distinguish between animus toward homosexuals and animus toward homosexual conduct.

You quote Scalia twice talking about disapproval of certain kinds of conduct, but present no evidence that Scalia has any feelings at all toward certain people. There is no necessary link between how one feels about a person and how one feels about a person's conduct.

A wife may hate the fact that her husband never remembers to put down the toilet seat, but one cannot conclude that she therefore hates him. A father may tell his son that it is unacceptable to smack his little sister, but that does not mean the father does not love the son. In fact, it is more often a sign of love, respect or at least concern when someone has the courage to tell you when you're behaving badly.

And Gail Wise, of Los Angeles, sees a bright side:

I see the brouhaha over Frank's remark as a sign of progress. In the past, few were bothered by being called a homophobe. Now, the term is considered an insult on a par with bigot or racist. This is good news.

Letters about the Employee Free Choice Act, expert witnesses (including those who testified for Phil Spector's defense team), why semesters are better than quarters, and finding a reputable surrogate agency, too.

Photo: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in 2008.  Credit: AP Photo/Rob Carr.

OK, Nadya Suleman is clearly an extreme case. But the most recently reported birth trends show the birth rate up in 2007--with 40% of those to unwed mothers. In fact, the nation broke a record for the number of births. Of course, this was two years ago, when the word "stimulus" had different connotations than it does today. The economy is generally assumed to be having a depressing effect on birth rates as well as on our collective psyche.

Though teen births were up slightly, most of the births outside marriage were to mothers 20 and older, and demographers say most of the bulge, so to speak, was among women in their 30s and 40s.

It makes you wonder what all the fuss was, from the supporters of Proposition 8, who said that marriage had to be reserved for male-female couples rearing their joint children--which they consider the only really healthy model.

Clearly, a strong minority of new mothers disagree with that. Looks like if the conservative religious movement wants more kids raised by married couples, one of the more effective ways to go about it would be to let same-sex couples wed.

Photo by Damir Segolj/Reuters

A California Supreme Court justice found the idea intriguing. So did the Times editorial board: To ensure equal marriage rights, the state of California could consider getting out of the marriage business altogether, performing and recognizing civil unions for all. People who want marriage could go to the church or other private group of their choice, and those churches or groups would be free to recognize only the marriages that fit within their beliefs.

Practically within moments after Justice Ming W. Chin posed that scenario to lawyers on both sides of the Proposition 8 debate, two college students from Studio City stepped into the fray. They received permission from the Secretary of State to circulate petitions for an initiative to do that very thing: Substitute "domestic partnership" for "marriage" in state law and while we're at it, undo Proposition 8. My first questions were of the more substantive sort, like, shouldn't we talk about this for awhile first? Would we be undoing the marriages of people who opted for a civil ceremony in earlier years and figured they were married good and proper? What would happen to joint tax filings for the federal government? And wouldn't "civil union" be a more acceptable term to voters than "domestic partnership"?

Then I read the proposed initiative in its entirety and realized that my worries might be a little premature. The real questions are, Just how easy is it to get permission to circulate petitions for an initiatives? Shouldn't the wording have to pass some sort of writing test?

The proposed measure calls for the term "marriage" to be removed from government legislation. The State of California's Law code would have "marriage" replaced with "domestic partnership," while the definition and rights provided would remain the same. The purpose of which is to provide quality amongst all couples, regardless of sexual orientation, without offending the religious sect. Legally speaking, "Marriage" itself would become a social ceremony, recognized by only non-governmental institutions. Furthermore, the initiative would void Proposition 8."

Ali Shams, one of the two authors and a senior at UC San Diego, told me that he and pal Kaelan Housewright were operating via Facebook, though they would get an Internet page going soon, and were posting copies of the petition online in the hopes that volunteers would print them and collect 1.2 million signatures. The new faces of politics. At least they're involved in the process.

The editorial board finds intriguing an idea raised about Proposition 8 during Thursday's state Supreme Court hearing: Having the state recognize only civil unions, while couples take their marriage vows at the religious or other private institution of their choice.

But just as marriage and family traditions have altered dramatically -- with shorter and more frequent marriages in a lifetime, couples living outside the married state and prenuptial agreements that trump customary family agreements -- it is time to consider an altered state role in domestic legalities. Justice Chin opened the discussion, and it is worth continuing.

The board also says the economy isn't a good reason to deny California a clean-air waiver to regulate greenhouse gases. In fact, the board says, Detroit will ultimately benefit from the production of more fuel-efficient cars. The board also calls on the world community to stand behind the International Criminal Court's warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir on charges of war crimes related to the atrocities in Darfur.

On the other side of the fold, writer Joe Queenan tells the investment experts to pipe down about the long-term value of stocks; this is indeed the time to panic. And columnist Joel Stein fantastizes about the up side of unemployment.

Illustration: Randall Enos for the Times

The state Supreme Court heard oral arguments for and against Proposition 8 today, and although the editorial board strongly supports marriage equality, it hopes the court ignores the political and emotional heat on the subject and focuses squarely on whether Prop. 8 amends the Constitution, as its backers maintain, or revises it, as opponents aver. By contrast there was pathetically little public interest in Tuesday's elections. Even though Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cruised to an easy victory, the board writes, the low turnout and lackluster support he garnered should tell him that voters aren't happy with City Hall:

Against opponents with little political experience, a dearth of funding and no political apparatus to match the machine he has constructed, the mayor ended up with a lower percentage of the vote than he had four years ago...That feeling--that Angelenos are bit players in a politician's personal story or a prize to be bargained for among parties to a political coalition--is back.

But if enthusiasm for the mayor has lessened, support for the Republican Party in California is in danger of disappearing entirely, writes Harold Meyerson over on Op-Ed. Demographic changes are giving a blue-tinge to once staunchly Republican districts, and if the GOP continues to oppose policies that its less conservative voters support then trouble is in the offing. Columnist Rosa Brooks writes that the memos released by the Justice Department  laying out the legal justification for overweening presidential power weren't just savage attacks on the Constitution, but  are also "outrageously bad" legal arguments.

Two other columnists take aim at structural problems with government: Patt Morrison says the California's budget disaster, term limits, redistricting and bad fiscal habits can only be fixed by a constitutional convention. George Kenney, a diplomat during the George H.W. Bush administration, calls for the Senate to change the supermajority rule requiring 60 votes to end a filibuster and force a vote. The nation's urgent business requires the smooth passage of legislation and the Dems shouldn't miss this opportunity.

Cartoon: Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette