Nothing to see here but more Prop 8 hand-wringing

[muckefuck]

I'm a lot more bummed by the success of Proposition 8 than I expected to me. Even though I knew that the last ballot measure passed easily, that polls showed a clear win, that any time we allow a popular vote on queer rights we get shafted--even with all these things in mind, I still blithely expected it to fail.

Now that the expensive legislative battle is over, another expensive legal battle begins. It pains me to think of all those tens of millions down the drain simply because a scant majority of Californians can't accept that they live in a secular democracy, that civil marriage is not a sacrament and follows different rules. That's what makes this first and foremost a defeat for liberal humanism, and only secondarily for gay rights.

I'm trying to set my lights by cpratt, who's been very upbeat in his comments today despite being one of the thousands of individuals who's just seen his marriage go *poof*. (But, then, I guess it's a little easier the second time around; think you'll get your license fee refunded this time?) We've known for years now that getting same-sex marriage is mostly a waiting game, as resistance drops with every generation. Once today's over-65s are dead and gone, the yeas will have it--but that's awfully cold comfort to anyone who would like some additional legal protections in the meantime.

There are other illiberal measures that stick in my crawl from this election--particularly Missouri's Official English law and Arkansas' hateful and unjustified barring of gay couples from adoption and foster care--but I had already resigned myself to those. For some reason, I keep having higher expectations for California, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Comments

[lhn.livejournal.com]

To say that this all could have been avoided if same-sex marriage proponents had only chosen a more "democratic" approach is patronizing and sophomoric. No path to same-sex marriage is sufficiently by-the-book that opponents will decline to challenge the result.

However, if it wins by democratic means (whether legislative or direct initiative), it's less likely that they'll be able to challenge the result. I don't expect many people to care as much as I do about process, which is why I've been concentrating on the pragmatic side of things: if proponents had succeeded via an approach that required convincing voters that they were right, then this sort of reversal wouldn't have been politically possible. Attempting to end-run the voters in a state where the voters don't even have to bother going through their legislators to undo it, in addition to being in my irrelevant opinion a misapplication of judicial power, is very likely to be a waste of time. One redeemable only by doing, belatedly, what needed to be done in the first place in terms of persuading the electorate.

Which, to be fair, they almost succeeded in doing. Such a moral victory may be cold comfort given the real effects that losing will have. But still, it's a sign that there's a decent chance that the real fight can be won in the long run. And a lot of same-sex marriage supporters have lately learned just how little barrier there is to getting the CA constitution amended...