So the California Supreme Court has upheld Proposition 8, banning same sex marriages in the state, as constitutional.
While Prop 8 is a terrible affront to basic human rights and equality, sadly and unfortunately, I think this is the way this particular battle had to go. Rightly or wrongly, conservatives get a lot of mileage about activist judges making law and defining societal values from the bench. It, like most everything else, is a ludicrous and obnoxiously ignorant framing of how our system actually works, but in this case, had the court overturned a valid election result, it would have played right into this idea, prolonging and making this debate uglier and more difficult than it needs to be.
Sadly, Prop 8 won at the ballot box in a decision made by the people in a free and fair election. As a result, the only way to really defeat it is by going back to that ballot box. Quite frankly, probably more than once. A court ruling would have only made the opposition to equality more certain of their righteousness and more determined to fight on, making them fight harder and less willing to give up.
They will keep trying, over and over again to impose their bigotry on all of us, by any means available to them. To shut them up once and for all is going to take a repeated and forceful declaration by the rest of us, the kind that is inarguable and incontrovertible, the kind which can only come at the ballot box.
I know this is a tough pill to swallow, especially for all the people out there who just want the same rights as their fellow citizens, but the loss of this particular battle makes the next one (whatever initiative ends up targeting Prop 8 for repeal) more defining – and that’s the one that we’re going to win. And when we do, opponents to equality will have no room to cry about activist judges and liberal agendas. It will only be the voice of the people demanding fairness and equality – the incontrovertable argument of our society.