Outsiders Again--Queers Lose in CA

Prop 8 upheld.

Supporters of same-sex marriage, who filed several suits challenging the proposition after its adoption, argued that the change to the state’s Constitution was so fundamental that the initiative was not an amendment at all but instead a “revision,” a term for measures that rework core constitutional principles.

Under California law, revisions cannot be decided through a simple signature drive and a majority vote, as with Proposition 8. Instead, they can be placed on the ballot only with a two-thirds vote by the Legislature.

But the justices said the proposition was an amendment, not a revision. It has been historically rare for the state’s courts to overturn initiatives on the ground that they are actually revisions, and many legal scholars had deemed the challenge to Proposition 8 a long shot.

During oral arguments, in March, the justices’ questions clearly anticipated the reasoning of Tuesday’s majority opinion, with Justice Joyce L. Kennard suggesting then that even if the initiative took away the “label of marriage,” it did not undermine the substantive rights involved. Mr. Minter, representing the plaintiffs, disagreed, arguing that without the word “marriage,” same-sex couples would find “our outsider status enshrined in our Constitution.”