The success of California's Proposition 8 was truly a David-versus-Goliath tale. The traditional marriage movement stood up to the judges, the California attorney general, the newspapers, the religious Left and the governor to win a major victory in the on-going culture war.
The anti-Prop 8 camp had home-field advantage on America's Left Coast, to boot.
The uphill battle was made even more difficult because the advocates of same-sex "marriage" framed the debate on their terms. California Attorney General Jerry Brown took it upon himself to give Prop 8 a different title than the one chosen by the people who did the legwork to put it on the ballot.
With the stroke of a pen, Brown reframed the debate by altering the title from "Limit on Marriage" to "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry."
Mr. Brown claims to have made the change for the sake of "accuracy," which is ludicrous on its face. The title of the initiative was wholly accurate as it stood. Brown's title contains a number of unexamined assumptions and a slew of overtly prejudicial language that undoubtedly cost Proposition 8 a number of "Yes" votes.
Despite Jerry Brown's attempt to sabotage the proposition, it still passed by a margin of 52.2 percent to 47.8 percent. It's game over, right?
Not quite. This is where the shadiness of the homosexual lobby becomes blatant cheating. The same Jerry Brown who tampered with the initiative's title declared that he didn't believe that the new amendment applied to same-sex couples who were already "married," and that was how he would enforce the law as attorney general.
Someone ought to fetch Mr. Brown his spectacles so that he can read the unambiguous language of the amendment: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
There is no wiggle-room here. Same-sex "marriages" are null and void in California, regardless of where or when they were performed. Brown's refusal to discharge his duties in accordance with the newly approved constitutional amendment proves that he is more interested in being an advocate for homosexuals than he is in doing his job. I don't know who has the authority under California law to fire him, but someone needs to do it.
The day after the election, the ACLU (et al.) filed a suit to invalidate Proposition 8. The problem with the suit is that it brings the problem of same-sex "marriage" right back to the same court that the voters had just trumped.
The court had decided in May that the state constitution required a revision of the only definition of marriage that California - and the vast majority of humanity - had ever known.
Traditional marriage advocates correctly believed that this was a misrepresentation and were forced to take the only recourse that voters have when the court declares something "unconstitutional" - to amend the constitution.
A constitutional amendment cannot, by definition, be unconstitutional. If traditional marriage advocates wanted to correct judicial arrogance, they had to go over the heads of the court, directly to the people. To bring the issue right back to the same court is asking the judges to validate their own snubbing, which is a little too much humble pie for most judges to swallow.
The argument that the ACLU makes is that a constitutional revision is required in this case rather than a simple amendment. Article XVIII of California's Constitution is relevant here.
Unfortunately, the document is everything that a constitution shouldn't be - thick as a brick, murky, and filled with Legalese rather than plain English. The article makes no real distinction between a revision and an amendment, other than to say that a revision must first pass through the legislature before being voted on by the masses.
It doesn't state which changes can be done by amendment and which must go through the revision process. It fails to even define the two terms, which are basically synonymous.
My first thought when I heard about this new challenge was that the homosexual lobby should have raised this objection before the election, rather than playing (and losing) by one set of rules, then demanding that the rules be changed afterwards.
Then I found out that in fact, they had made the identical legal challenge in July in a desperate attempt to save California from democracy. The court ruled against them, essentially acknowledging that Proposition 8 need not meet any higher standard than that of an amendment. This new lawsuit is as vacuous as the first.
In any case, arguing after the fact that the initiative never should have been on the ballot in the first place is childish. The ballots were printed, the people voted, and the homosexual lobby lost. Tough nookie.
In a major victory of the silent majority of judicial supremacists, supporters of Prop 8 were forced to use their only safeguard against a runaway court - the constitutional amendment. To lose this victory now because of lawyerly hair-splitting would be nothing short of sucker-punching democracy. I guess sucker-punching democracy is what liberals do best.
Ben Duffy is a guest columnist.
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