This morning is cloudy as I write, and how appropriate it is that the sun is not shining. Yesterday a very dark thing happened in California. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker from (surprise surprise) San Francisco overturned Proposition 8.

Prop 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license…Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.

Didn’t We Vote For This… TWICE?

In 2000 I had just turned 18 and in my first election I proudly (and biblically) voted yes for this short sentence to be added to the Family Code: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Proposition 22 only stated as law what the vast majority of Americans have held to be true in the past, marriage is a union between two things, and those things are a man and a woman. That was overturned, despite the will of the voters. For 8 years we enjoyed a statute which defined marriage biologically and biblically.

When  the courts overturned Prop 22 California voted for an amendment to the California Constitution to the same effect. I know we aren’t supposed to quote Wikipedia, but this is a safe one:

Proposition 8 was a California ballot proposition that sought to change the California Constitution to add a new section (7.5) to Article I, that would read: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

This time it was more than a statute, it was an amendment to the very constitution which was used to overturn Prop 22. A statute can be overturned if it is found to be inconsistent with the state constitution. This point is good, by the way. As a Christian and as an American I want my laws to be consistent with one another. Laws can not be enforced fairly if they contradict one another. With Prop 8 now adding a familiar phrase to the California Constitution the voters had spoken again. They told us that a biblical/common sense definition of marriage was unconstitutional, so we changed the constitution. Continue reading →