CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2024, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“KEY
PROPOSITION AIMS TO PROTECT SAME SEX MARRIAGE”
Almost 16
years ago, California passed a short constitutional amendment via a ballot
proposition that included no reason for its adoption. This was pure
emotionalism.
“Only
marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,” the
amendment, known in the 2008 election as Proposition 8, said very simply.
This was
the reaction to an action four years earlier by then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin
Newsom to have the city/county government he headed start issuing marriage
licenses to same-sex couples.
Newsom’s
move was a first. It prompted an emotional response by opponents terrified that
the fabric of America would be destroyed by letting gay people marry one
another and begin to enjoy the tax, insurance and other benefits of legal
unions.
Prop. 8
did not last long in the courts. Yes, it was ratified by the state Supreme
Court soon after it passed on a 52-48 percent vote, the state justices ruling
it created only a small exception in the California Constitution’s equal rights
clause.
This
ruling was quickly overturned by a federal judge in San Francisco, with the
U.S. Supreme Court eventually refusing to take up the case, thus allowing gay
marriages, but also letting the language forbidding them to remain in the state
Constitution.
The
ruling okaying same-sex unions said Prop. 8’s ban violated both the equal
protection and due process provisions of the U.S. Constitution. That decision
and its reasoning have stood for more than 14 years.
But
forbiddance of those unions remains enshrined in the state Constitution, and
supporters now fear that a Republican takeover of both houses of Congress this
fall, combined with election of Donald Trump as President, could resuscitate it
and lead to ending gay unions.
They know
the emotions behind Prop. 8 still exist, as one recent statement from the
California Family Council shows. It claimed the new proposition might
“dismantle the traditional family structure.”
All this
makes the move to strike Prop. 8’s currently moribund language potentially the
most important measure on a ballot that will also feature major initiatives on
crime, housing, health and taxation.
It’s why
both houses of the state Legislature voted by margins topping two-thirds last
spring to place an antidote on the November ballot. No one is sure today
whether their measure striking Prop. 8’s language from the state’s chief
governing document could withstand a potential new federal law with those or
similar words at a national level.
More than
200,000 Californians now live in same-sex marriages, so reactivating the old
Prop. 8 just might lead to the very sort of upheaval the measure’s supporters
originally feared from gay marriage.
Insurance
policies could be cancelled in an era when new ones can be hard to get.
Same-sex spouses could lose health coverage under their partners’ policies.
Longstanding adoptions could be threatened. And much more.
How
serious is any threat to same-sex unions? One clue came in the concurring
opinion issued by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when he voted to
end the Roe v. Wade protection of abortion rights.
Thomas
opined the court should also reconsider rulings on things like same-sex
marriage and contraception, a formerly very private subject that’s become a
major issue in Congress.
California
and other states have since passed ballot measures to enshrine abortion rights
in their own, more local constitutions, which are permitted to grant more
rights, but never less, than the U.S. Constitution.
That
principle, for just one example, allows California’s tough fair housing laws to
persist in the face of periodic opposition from real estate interests.
Newsom,
now the governor, is already campaigning for the measure to strike the old
Proposition 8, which does not yet bear a number. “Here we are in 2024,” he
observed the other day, “and we’re…experiencing a rights regression.”
All this
explains why, even though there is no explicit threat today to same-sex
marriage (other than the musings of Thomas), top political figures like Newsom
and former state Senate President Toni Atkins (who has a same-sex marriage),
urgently seek elimination of Prop. 8’s language.
Doing
that could prevent future confusion and disruption in thousands of lives.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias
at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most
Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,"
is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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