McFreedom

So, the legislature voted to change marriage to be between "two persons" instead of a man and a woman. It's still to be seen whether the Governor will sign it. I hope he will, and I think it'd be pretty surprising if he didn't. The Washington Post article linked to above casts his decision in terms of not angering his base before the anti-Gerrymandering legislation this November, but I think that misses the point. Republicans have wanted that measure for a long time, and they'll vote for it even if Schwarzenegger marries a gay man himself between now and then. I suspect the Governor personally would like to see gay marriage (his spokesman's assertion that he supports domestic partnership but not gay marriage not withstanding). But, I think that, politically, this is a great way for him to reach across the aisle and play to his category-smashing strengths. Signing this bill would get a lot of Democrats who currently detest him has a shallow, knee-jerk conservative to honestly reconsider their opinions. The people who voted for Proposition 22 (The Defense of Marriage Act) are going to vote for Arnie anyway, because the leftist alternative (i.e., Democrat) will be someone who wants to make gay marriage subsidized.

One topic that's not been well addressed in the press is: "Given that the people of California passed Proposition 22 in 2000 that stated 'Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California,' how does the legislature have the power to do this?" The answer is that Prop 22 didn't alter the state constitution - it merely altered the state Family Code at the time, adding section 308.5 whose entire content was as stated in the preceding sentence. Marriage itself was already defined elsewhere (in section 300 of the same Code) as being "a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman". The purpose of section 308.5 was to prevent "stealth" gay marriage, where California would recognize inadvertently recognize gay marriages legally enacted in other states when the couples moved here.

As all Proposition 22 was change the Family Code, the legislature has ample power to change it back, so there's no state constitutional issue, here. Not that it'll stop the right-wingers from suing - but it seems pretty obvious they'll lose that battle (and expose their own hypocrisy in complaining that they just "don't want the courts to settle the issue"). It'll be interesting to see what the governor decides to do, in the next week. I, for one, am keeping my fingers crossed that he'll do the right thing and sign this bill into law.