It may look like a party here in California, but it's really a wake.
Regardless of what you feel about gay marriage, Californians, and Americans everywhere, should be sorrowing greatly: the rule of law died on Wednesday. In its place Anarchy was birthed official life.
Make no mistake about it: what REALLY happened on Wednesday was that the US Supreme Court ruled that you don't have to honor the law if you don't want to. By doing so, it wiped out exactly what made America great: we honored and sustained the law.
For over 200 years, Americans have revered the law. Don't like the law? Work to get it changed. If SCOTUS really believed that the proponents of Prop 8 lacked standing, they would have refused to take the case in the beginning. How exactly is it, that you agree to hear the argument of a case, inviting them into your court as it were, and then decide AFTER the fact that they don't have a right to be there?
What SCOTUS did was say, literally, that the law does not matter, only your feelings do. Prop 8 didn't fail on the point of law (not even SCOTUS said it did), it failed because our elected officials, who swore to uphold the law refused to do so. (And by the way, that's a feeling not even the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was willing to allow.)
So when Jerry Moonbeam gets voted out next term (or God willing, impeached), he doesn't really have to leave if he doesn't want to, he can just stay in office if he feels like it. If/when we pass a medical marijuana law in Los Angeles (and we did), the Chief of Police can still bust people for selling pot, because he feels like it. When Californians amended the 3 Strikes law, the prison wardens or prosecutors don't really have to free or not prosecute 3rd strikers for something inane if they don't feel like it.
Don't get me wrong: if Jerry Moonbeam had done his job and defended the law in California 4 years ago and Prop 8 had been struck down on its merits, and SCOTUS had agreed with the strike, I might not have liked it, but I'd have lived with it.
BUT THIS IS ANARCHY BORN, BRED, and RATIFIED WITH AN OFFICIAL STAMP.
For those of you who think this is a great day regardless, remember this feeling. Because the next Governor or State Attorney General can REFUSE to allow gay marriage if they want to.
After all, the United States Supreme Court said so: it's okay to "refuse to defend the law," no one is going to make you do any different.
We're so busy partying out here in California, we fail to even notice the body and soul of America in the coffin. It's time to sober up and quit dancing on the gravestone of the law.
The legal application of the concept of "dependent" was developed over many many generations and was designed with a model of male breadwinner and female homemaker for the protection of women and children. It weaves through thousands of city, state, and national laws. SSM dilutes that protection by increasing the circle of beneficiaries. As a simple start, think of the effect on Social Security for instance. Or company paid health insurance. Does that make any sense in a SSM? It also makes no sense in a marriage which plans no children - a more and more common practice. Marriages with traditional roles are financial hurt by this development. ... I wonder how you feel about Brown versus Board of Education - that also abrogated state law, aka "the will of the people". The founders of this country did not have such worship of "the will of the people" - they built lots of checks against it running rampant. Most would have been against the idea of a referendum for instance. I am in favor of the Electoral College. It magnifies a win - designed to declare a clear winner - almost always works.
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