Posted by
Jason Cunningham on Friday, May 16, 2008 3:01:34 PM
Perhaps America's law schools should start requiring the nation's future jurists to pass remedial math before foisting them onto the rest of us.
By a 4-3 vote, the California Supreme Court overturned a state ban on gay marriage. 4-3. That's a margin of 57 percent. In 2000, Californians voted -- by a margin of 61 percent -- to ban same-sex marriage. So now the mathematics world has been turned on its head. Number crunchers everywhere are scrambling, desperate for an answer: How can this be? How can 57 be greater than 61?
Indeed. How can it? Sarcastic arithmetic aside, what we have just witnessed here in California is a textbook example of judicial activism at its worst. First, four bleeding hearts overruled the clear will of thousands upon thousands of Californians, who voted in the context of that wonderful thing (I'm being serious now) we call democracy. Second, as far as I'm aware, there's nothing in California's constitution related to marriage, or to human sexuality. Not even our national Constitution says anything about marriage being one of our "inalienable rights" (Uh-oh -- I'm having flashbacks about that other not-in-the-Constitution constitutional "right," abortion).
As with having a driver's license, marriage is a privilege, not a right. Furthermore, it seems clear to me that the four judges' decision was based not on the law but on their personal feelings about love. Look, Fantabulous Four, you're not marriage counselors, and you're not psychologists. You're jurists -- at least, that's what the "University of the Internet" certificates on your wall claim. But listen to this drivel spewed by Chief Justice Ronald George: "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."
So the dishonorable Justice George apparently thinks he's Dr. Drew. And on top of that, he's basing his decision on shifty social mores instead of on the clear letter of the law and the explicit will of the people. And how can he claim what he claims about "our state," when "our state" -- the sensible majority of Californians -- made it clear that they don't recognize same-sex marriage? This was a purely ideological, personal-agenda-driven decision.