11.05.08
Prop 8 looks like it will pass
It’s looking like California’s Prop 8 is going to pass, and that’s a very sad thing.
However, I think it was far, FAR more important that Obama get elected than that Prop 8 fail. If McCain/Palin had won, we would have seen a significant shift in the Supreme Court to the right. We could have kissed goodbye to any hopes of getting marriage equality through the Supreme Court for twenty-five or thirty years.
With Obama in office, it will probably stay roughly the same in liberal/conservative makeup, but get younger. I expect that we will now see a federal Supreme Court case in five to ten years about marriage equality. And we will win that one — not just for California, but for everybody.
There is no good legal argument against marriage equality. Let me repeat that: there is no good legal argument against marriage equality. The arguments are emotional or religious, not rational. The rational arguments — the one on which our legal system is founded — say that citizens get equal protection under the law. It’s in the Constitution. It’s fundamental to the constitution. So unless the SCOTUS has people whose judgement is influenced by religion or emotion, we will win that fight. (This will be especially true after five or ten more years of seeing same-sex marriages function in Massachusetts, New York, and Connecticut, Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Israel, and South Africa without destroying the fabric of society.)
So yes, it is disappointing. It would have been nice to put this issue to rest in California forever. However, it is not dead. We will overcome.
(Update: Andrew Sullivan has a similar post, written with eloquence.)
