California Marriage Law: 4,618,673 to Four

(FRC) After a brief period of judicial restraint, California voters watched in horror this afternoon as judicial activism returned with a vengeance in one of the most egregious rulings in American jurisprudence. It took just four activist judges to overturn the historical definition of marriage, not to mention the vote of more than four and a half million Californians, as the state supreme court issued a much-anticipated ruling on the question of same-sex "marriage."

By a 4-3 margin, the justices struck down a law, adopted by 61 percent of voters in 2000, which defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman. By imposing same-sex "marriage" on voters, the California Supreme Court knowingly usurped the right of the people to effect change in public policy. This outcome is even more troubling than Massachusetts', in that California voters had already won the right to put a marriage protection amendment on the ballot in November.

How can this be? The good folks at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette emphatically stated that the effort to protect traditional marriage with a constitutional amendment in Pennsylvania was not needed. This is from the Post Gazette just 4 days ago:

“Because marriage in Pennsylvania is already defined as the union of one man and one woman -- due to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act -- the effort to pass a constitutional amendment to make the same point was always pointless. The idea that activist judges might overturn existing law in this socially conservative state never deserved to be taken seriously.”

So we have no worries because we live in a “socially conservative state”. Hardly reassuring, since the 3 of the 4 California judges voting to approve gay marriage were Republicans.

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