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First, what the California Court did was interpret the California Constitution. The Court found, quite correctly, that under the Constitution, there is no basis for withholding the right to marry from people simply because they are gay. I have actually read the entire opinion; I would hope that anyone who thinks it was "wrong" would do the same. The Court did not "make" law -- it interpreted the law, which is what judges do.
Second, the "people" have enacted any number of laws that were unconstitutional. The purpose of a Constitution, and of the judicial system, is, among other things, to protect against the tyranny of the majority. In Brown v. Board of Education, the United States Supreme Court rejected the will of the people to find in favor of integration. In Loving v. Virginia, the USSC rejected to the will of the people to find banning interractial marriage unconstitutional (which California had done under its Constitution two decades earlier). Roe v. Wade was an obvious case of the Court finding a Constitutional right regardless of how the voters of any state felt about the issue of choice. The California Supreme Court was simply doing its job - not "making" law.
Third, there will be no unintended consequences. Marriage has been "radically redefined" numerous times over the centuries. It has involved business transctions, underage girls married to older men, and polygamy. It has been limited to people of the same nationality and religion, and again, until 1967, there were still states that limited marriage to people of the same race. This is not about the "slippery slope." It is about a specific Constitutional right for a specific group of citizens and taxpayers. And of course there are counters to the false "slippery slope" arguments. If you want to amend the Constitution to limit it to "traditional" marriage, one of the most "traditional" forms of marriage, going back to earliest Biblical times, is polygamy! And what would be the unintended consequences of allowing people to amend the Constitution based on their personal religious beliefs. If marriage now, why not church affiliation later? Or church attendance? Tithing? Where are the limits to using the Constitution to impose personal moral and religious beliefs on others?
Fourth, there is nothing the gay community can do to churches that compares to what churches have done to the LGBT community. I have heard of no reports of persecution of churches anywhere in the world that permits gay marriage (including Massachusetts) and can't imagine it happening here. A church can refuse to perform a wedding ceremony, without losing its tax-exempt status or facing persecution. Churches have refused to perform all sorts of wedding ceremonies over the year, without any problems. I'm not Mormon, so even if I were straight, I couldn't get married in a Mormon temple. And the Catholic church has strict rules on who can get married in the church. That's not a problem. If Proposition 8 is defeated, every church will have the right to decide whether or not to perform a same-sex wedding. But if it passes, then churches will lose that right, and can only perform, at best, services that are spiritual and symbolic, but that don't result in a legally-recognized marriage. So a vote for Proposition 8 is actually a vote AGAINST religious freedom for those churches, without providing any sort of protection for churches that disagree.
Finally, passing Proposition 8 is not going to promote the stability of marriage, or result in more kids being raised by opposite-sex parents. There will still be gay couples, like me, who raise children. There will still be straight families raising children. Gay families are not going to go away if Proposition 8 passes -- but their children will be told that they are not in a "real" family, and their Constitutional rights will be stripped away. Don't the kids of gay parents deserve stability and acceptance? The California Supreme Court put it beautifully in its opinion: "a stable two-parent family relationship, supported by the state’s official recognition and protection, is equally as important for the numerous children in California who are being raised by same-sex couples as for those children being raised by opposite-sex couples (whether they are biological parents or adoptive parents)."
I urge you to reconsider. Feel free to PM me if you'd like to discuss this further.
Thanks.
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