"The measure was designed to overturn May's State Supreme Court decision ... The firmly grounded ruling..."
The ruling was 4 to 3. How can such a narrow ruling be firmly grounded? Maybe if the ruling were unanimous or 6 to 1. But, by definition, a 4 to 3 ruling isn't. I'm sure the NY Times liked the ruling, but instead of simply admitting their position, their editorial writers pretended some legal knowledge. They are laymen who don't seem to understand California law.
"... danger of allowing the ballot box to be used to take away people's fundamental rights."
One of the people of California's basic rights is to amend their Constitution via the Initiative. And, for better or worse, this is a "meta-right" (or, as a friend joked, "deep magic"). I think it's strange that it only takes a 50.1% vote, but that's the way it is.
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From a democratic rights viewpoint, Prop 8 is actually complicated.
The reason for this is that the reason Prop 8 passed was the big pro-Obama turnout. Many black and Latino people have a traditional understanding of marriage. To them, familiar with religious tradition and not with law, passing Prop 8 may have seemed obviously correct. The majority of both black and Latino voters voted in favor of Prop 8. So people who are libertarian, democratic and mildly anti-corporate are frustrated.
The elite, both Democratic and Republican, need a lot of voters who are not particularly sympathetic to their social libertarian positions. The NYT looking down on the voters who passed Prop 8 is in the same position as the corporate Republicans who look down on the evangelicals as useful idiots.
Neither elite wants to admit how they really feel, because they want to be champions of democracy. It's the people they can't stand.
So the majority of the people want to prevent gays from being "married". for the excellent reason that they see gay relationships as different from the marriage they are familiar with in Catholic and Baptist church traditions. The gays want "marriage" because they correctly see separate but equal as a disguise for inferior. So we're back to the traditional conflict between democracy and the rights of minorities, dating back to the founding of the Republic. It'll get resolved somehow, these things usually do. I just hope my lesbian acquaintance Ann is not too badly hurt in the process.
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