The length of this thread is, I think, a testament to the significance of the issue - not just in California - but throughout the United States. I think there are many of us that do see this as a seminal moment in the development of our nation. We are facing some of the most fundamental issues of our history, and this is the backdrop against which the consideration of our founding principles are being examined. That is the reason that I am so focused on it.
What are our foundational principles? Do we protect the interests of our minorities against the "tyranny of the majority"? The California Supreme Court, like many courts before it and since, including the United States Supreme Court, has identified marriage as a fundamental constitutional right, indeed an unalienable civil right, in the words of the California Supreme Court. Once it determined that this was so, can a bare majority of the population of California take that right away from a significant minority population? Is it thus no longer an unalienable right? And if this is true for this minority, isn't it true for any minority, and any right, unalienable or not?
For the immediate purpose of the current Prop 8 debate, though, the question is whether that majority's effort represents an Amendment or a Revision. If this is not a revision, and thus, a failed attempt, I am not sure that anything can be a revision. As a practical matter, the California Supreme Court should invalidate the effort (Prop 8). It cannot be overturned by a federal court, it is expressly within its authority under the California Constitution to determine what is a Revision, and it will bring the silliness of willy-nilly constitutional initiatives under some control. Whether it will do so will (or technically, has done so), will be revealed in just over an hour.
