Looks like there is some good news from California on the subject of same-sex marriages. Jed has more details, but this is the important bit:
we determine that the language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman†is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples.
I think “Woo Hoo!” is an appropriate reaction. 🙂
What’s interesting about California is that a couple of years ago the state legislature passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed it with the bizarre reason that it was up to the courts – not the legislature – to legalize same-sex marriage.
I believe that this occurred prior to Arnold’s reelection when he had to fend off any possible challenge from conservatives in the Republican primary as well as persuade them not to stay at home in the general.
If the California courts do establish the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, I expect Arnold to take a punt or feebly and deliberately state his concern about without taking action.
I’d lay money – with appropriate odds – that it will be a Republican governor who signs the first same-sex marriage law. A few years ago, i would put money on Arnold forgetting the unfortunate stress of his reelection. Now I’d lay money on Gov. Jodie Rell of Connecticut.
I say this because my old buddies at MarriageEquality in Massachusetts have now turned their attention to building up campaigns and lawsuits in neighboring New England states. Vermont and Connecticut have the opportunity to upgrade from civil unions. But Vermont marriage supporters are gun-shy after the powerful conservative backlash to civil unions a few years ago.
Slowly and slowly we’re getting there.
A couple of comments in response to Simon:
First, what Schwarzenegger said in 2007, the last time he vetoed a same-sex marriage bill (he’s now done it twice), was that the legislature should not go against the expressed will of the people, and that he wanted to leave it up to the people or the courts. I would’ve been very pleased if he’d signed the bills, but in vetoing them he wasn’t just being arbitrary or random; he was saying that the people of CA put the original law in place (via a ballot measure), and that the legislature shouldn’t unilaterally overrule that. I don’t like that answer, but I can respect it.
You wrote: “If the California courts do establish the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, I expect Arnold to take a punt or feebly and deliberately state his concern about without taking action.” I think there may be some confusion somewhere. The California courts just *did* establish the constitutional right to same-sex marriage (that’s what Cheryl’s blog entry here is about), and Schwarzenegger’s response today was that (a) he will respect the Court’s decision, and (b) he continues to oppose the idea of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. (A position he’s stated before; and an important one, because those opposed to same-sex marriage are trying to get such an amendment on the ballot for this November.)
So as of this morning’s Court decision and is subsequent statement, Schwarzenegger is now officially on the side of us same-sex marriage proponents — and, impressively, he’s gotten there without being inconsistent in his public statements. I’m pretty happy with him at the moment.
I’ve long since given up trying to explain to people from outside California that Arnie is not actually a rabid, gun-toting right-wing loony. His movie image precedes him.
I appreciate Jed’s clarification.
It’s significant and encouraging that Arnold has taken the opposite position of Mitt Romney. Arnold is respecting the court decision and opposing a constitutional amendment by ballot initiative. Romney took the exact opposite position by favoring an initiative over the court decision. But, at that point, Romney was running for President and needed to appease the religious right.
Schwarzenegger is proving to be a fascinating and skilled politician. I can’t imagine him running for the Senate and he can’t run for President. He seems to prefer being Governor of California more than any other position. I view his behavior as a smart politician carefully playing to a centrist majority of the very varied California electorate.
It’s great that for once political considerations have led a governor to take the right moral and public policy position. This is indeed a great day.
He might not have directly contradicted himself, but his actions and words sure make a counterintuitive mess from out here. So he’s okay with 4 people overruling the will of the people, but not with a much larger #–elected BY those same people (i.e., the legislature)–doing the same thing?! Sorry, it doesn’t make sense to me.
You’re sure he’s not just trapped by his own words and his inability to overrule the CA Supreme Court anyway? What else could he say now, anyway, without sounding even more capricious?
(Yeah, I know, another outsider commenting on CA politics; but in fairness, I don’t think he’s the Terminator.)
I’m not privy to his innermost thoughts, but I don’t know if he’s ever said that he’s actually personally opposed to same-sex marriage. (A Washington Post article from 2005 says that a spokesman said that Schwarzenegger “supports domestic partnerships but opposes same-sex marriage,” but it’s hard to tell from that context whether he meant “personally doesn’t believe it should happen” or “doesn’t actively politically support this bill legalizing it.”)
He’s certainly made strong statements in favor of gay rights and in favor of CA’s domestic partnerships.
The question of whose decision this should be is a thorny one. The legislature said it should be up to them and not the people (because the rights of the minority should not be up for majority vote). At least one member of the Court said it should not be up to the Court, though obviously at least four members felt it should be. Schwarzenegger has been saying since 2005 that it should be up to the courts or the people. (That was before the current case had been brought before the CA supreme court, but well after the precursors of the current case had started wending their way through the legal system. So when he said it, he knew it was possible that the courts would eventually say what they ended up saying this week.) The people opposed to same-sex marriage say that it should be up to “the people,” by which they mean the people who agree with them. And so on.
My view is that one of the state supreme court’s main jobs is to determine whether a given law violates the state constitution. That’s exactly what they did here: they looked at a law (which was enacted by popular vote rather than, as more normally would happen, the legislature), and they said “this law is unconstitutional.”
So it seems quite reasonable to me that Schwarzenegger would have felt that this should be in the hands of the court.
Note that the legislature is, by contrast, not normally in the business of overturning laws passed by popular vote. And in this particular case, the law in question got 61% of the vote; I don’t think it would pass today, but in 2000 it passed handily.
In the MA situation, there was a common assertion that the “activist judges” were overturning not only the expressed will of the people but also the will of the legislature and of the governor. In CA, by contrast, we’ve got the courts agreeing with the legislature, and the governor at least not protesting, so all three branches seem to be more or less in accord. It remains to be seen what the fourth branch of government (popular vote) will say, but I’m optimistic.
Of course I don’t think you can read his mind. 😉 That was part of my point; absent mind-reading, he seemed inconsistent to me. There are simpler explanations than that his take on it is bizarre (to me).
But then yesterday, I read this–part of a comment on The Whatever:
One could argue it was the court’s problem, not his, thus he didn’t have to step in anyway. It’s not like people don’t use seeming-logic to do unfortunate things all the time….
But anyway, if the comment’s correct–perhaps you know (I don’t)–then it casts his (to me) inconsistency in a different light.