California Campaigns and the Constitution

How will the marriage issue impact the 2010 race for Governor? Should the threshold for amending the state constitution be changed? And what's going on with the marriage defenders and the marriage neutering groups?

All of that was covered in the news over the last few days.

[My analysis is below the fold.]

Over the weekend, both marriage neutering proponents and marriage defenders had rallies in California. First up is an article by Alejandra Molina of the Orange County Register.

"If we're going to succeed, we're going to need to explain who we are to the heartland," said Linda May, 59, with the Orange County Equality Coalition. "We need to be in the middle and explain we're their sisters and their neighbors. We're in their lives already, but we need to come out."

Well, guess what? We're your siblings and neighbors, too. So what?

"Fresno represents middle America values, and we can start changing our neighbors' feelings about gay marriage beginning right here in the Central Valley," said lead organizer Robin McGehee, a 36-year-old college professor who married her longtime partner last year.

What if it isn't about our feelings, but about logic, reason, values? But as far as feelings, what if our feelings are just as strong as your feelings of homosexuality? Why do your feelings matter more than ours?

The event attracted the movement's well-known activists and such celebrities as Academy Award-winning actress Charlize Theron.

One less reason for me to go see a movie.

Jessica Garrison has the Los Angeles Times story.

Labor, religious and civil rights activists planned to follow the march with a meeting today in Fresno to plot the next steps in their campaign for marriage [neutering].

Do you know where your union dues are?

Some African American gay activists were troubled by Saturday's march from Selma to Fresno. They suggested that organizers appeared to be trying to borrow symbolism of the civil rights movement -- the 1965 marches from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery were indelible events -- while ignoring the fact that gay activists do not suffer the same kind of oppression that blacks did in 1960s Alabama.

It's more different than apples and oranges, it is apples and orange rubber balls.

The speakers included Cleve Jones, who worked with the assassinated San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and brought his famous megaphone to the rally, and Eric McCormack, who is straight but played a gay lawyer in the TV sitcom "Will & Grace."

McCormack said he came in part because his character was the first gay person that many Americans accepted into their homes. "I'm here to talk to those people who voted yes on 8. How does it hurt you to see them at the altar?" he said.

Nobody is stopping them from going to the altar, Mr. McCormack. Conversely, the California Marriage Amendment doesn't hurt anybody who care enough to register as domestic partners.

Tony Perry and Spencer Weiner of the Los Angeles Times report on the rallies held by marriage defenders.

As the rally broke up, about 25 gay rights activists surrounded a group of Christian Harley-Davidson motorcyclists who called themselves the Fresno Motorcycle Ministry.

The police intervened and the motorcyclists left peacefully.

Um, why wouldn't they? They weren't the ones being aggressive, according to how this was written.

Martin Wisckol of the Orange County Register writes about how the marriage neutering advocates are going to try to do things differently in their campaign leading up to the vote on their ballot proposition.

Speaking of campaigns, the Los Angeles Times has an article by Michael Finnegan on how the issue impacts the race to be elected California Governor in 2010.

Associated Press writer Juliet Williams has a similar article.

Finally, Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times has an article on the amendment process for the California Constitution.

The California Supreme Court decision upholding [the California Marriage Amendment] illuminated the history and oddities of the state Constitution, provoking renewed discussion about whether voters can too easily amend it.

Whereas the U.S. Constitution has been amended only 27 times, California's top legal document has been altered more than 500 times, often by voter initiative. The state's Constitution is the third longest in the world, exceeded only by those of India and Alabama.

California is a single state. The federal government is supposed to be a union of fifty states. There's a big difference.

Californians can amend their Constitution by obtaining a simple majority vote on an initiative. Chief Justice Ronald M. George observed in Tuesday's ruling that many other state constitutions are more difficult to amend. Although the court did not call for limiting the amendment process, the majority said such a move would be possible and maybe even proper.

It is the place of the people, or the people and the legislature, to amend the state constitution – not the place of the court, and it isn't the court's place to tell us we should change it. Each of those justices can go to the ballot like every other citizen and make a single vote.

Notice how everything revolves around this quest for forced affirmation of a particular form of pseudogamy as marriage? Now they really do want to revise the state constitution, because everything must be reordered or changed or eliminated for the sake of that affirmation. This is what could finally result in revising the constitution. Notice that a couple of years ago, nobody was running articles or commentaries about how it was so easy to amend the constitution. I wonder how long before LGBTQQ activists get "male" and "female" removed from birth certificates? After all, those designations involve discrimination and "separate but equal".

If they want to make it harder to amend the state constitution, how about we do so before their marriage neutering amendment makes the ballot?