By Justin Ewers, US News and World Report
Tomorrow, the state Supreme Court will hear legal challenges to the law
SAN FRANCISCO—A majority of California voters may have supported Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment passed four months ago that eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry. But as the state Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments on a series of legal challenges to the law tomorrow, more and more members of the state’s political establishment continue to take a public stand against it—raising questions, in some quarters, about why so many politicians here have opted to openly break with a majority of voters.
This week, both houses of the state Legislature and the state’s attorney general, Jerry Brown, roundly condemned the law and asked the Supreme Court to overturn it. The state’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of its U.S. senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, and its highest-ranking congresswoman, Nancy Pelosi, have all made statements since the election denouncing the law. Proposition 8, which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman, passed in November with 52 percent of the vote.
In a party-line vote on Monday, the Democrat-controlled state Legislature took a legal stand against the law, passing a nonbinding resolution declaring that voters alone did not have the right to amend the Constitution in this case. The resolution asserts that Prop. 8, because it strips a minority group of a constitutionally protected right by mere majority vote, is an improper revision of the Constitution. Since a revision requires a two-thirds vote of the state Legislature before it can appear on the ballot—something Proposition 8 never got—lawmakers have asked the court to render the law invalid.
