Actually, it could have been worse

[hrj]

On that Prop 8 thing ... the thing is, the realistic expectation was that they'd uphold the proposition but also uphold the existing marriages. That wasn't any big surprise. What was somewhat surprising was the amount of effort their decision put into squeezing the effects of Prop 8 into as small and restricted a space as possible. Having read through the text of the decision (well, ok, I skimmed large sections of it, but I did go through the entire 136 pages), it seems to me that this is a court that would have loved to have tossed P8 out entirely but they simply couldn't make that work. Instead, they came up with the most restrictive possible interpretation to uphold and then more or less laid out the agenda for how marriage equality supporters should proceed. I.e., force the legislature to actually provide an option identical in substance to "marriage" (but called ... Fred ... or George ... or something) and litigate the heck out of any actual functional differences. Find some same-sex couples married in other states (both before and after passage of P8) who have become residents of California and demand a clear explanation of whether California is going to recognize them as married-by-that-word and whether California is going to treat two couples differently, both with identical marital status in their state of origin, based on when their marriages occurred in relation to P8.

And in the meantime, maybe Obama will grow a backbone and do something about DOMA and DADT.

Comments

[blaurentnv.livejournal.com]

While the ruling wasn't what I'd hoped, I didn't see how it could be what I hoped. I have not had the chance yet to read the full decision, but your summary is encouraging. I was relieved that the worst case did not happen; the prop 8 advocates expected it to retroactively annul marriages that happened during the period they were legal. This seems like the best reasonable outcome we could have hoped for.

With the calls for a Constitutional Convention increasing for a variety of reasons, this could become more complicated.