One Judge vs 7 million votes
 

Judge overturns the voted on and rejected prposition 8 in california.

Personally I dont mind gay marrage but this is tyranny.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...OR3D.DTL&tsp=1

The whole topic is really moot. On the one hand it went to a public vote, and the public voted to enact Prop 8. I'm not sure where a Judge gets the legal authority to overrule voters. But on the other hand this shouldn't even be an issue at all because no level or branch of government should define what marriage is or isn't. What threat is gay marriage to them? If you treat gays and lesbians like any other citizen there won't be a problem at all.

You can't vote something into law that violates the Constitutional rights of other people, no matter how big a majority you have. Those rights are guaranteed to every citizen and neither the state nor a majority vote of its residents can take them away.

The judge ruled that Prop 8 was unconstitutional and, if it is, then no amount of voter support for it can justify it being on the books. That's not tyranny, that's how things are supposed to work.

Oh, hey, I know, let's get 7 million people to vote in favor of bringing slavery back and repealing womens' suffrage. It's okay because that many people couldn't possibly be wrong and it's perfectly fine to let an already privileged majority decide which rights they'll allow everybody else to have.

:nope:

Judicial review != tyranny

It's the exact opposite. It's overturning tyranny of the majority. You can't vote to nullify someone's constitutional rights just because you have a majority.

That's the basic idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQno...eature=related

:DL

The tyranny of the majority .. thats a good one ;)

Please tell me that's a joke.

Is marriage a right? Also, if this is a civil right and no amount of voter support should apply then why did they hold a vote at all? :hmmm:

The "majority" gets to decide a great many things by voting on them.

However they do not get to decide whether or not someone not included in their "majority" is entitled to the same constitutional rights and protections that everybody else is... even if that "minority" is 1 person and the "majority" is everybody else.

I guess if I could round up a majority of voters and we put forth the proposition that you, personally, be denied certain rights and privileges that we didn't think you deserved, and then voted on it and won, you'd be okay with that. Want to get a driver's license? Buy some property? Ride on our "No Steamwake" buses and eat at our "No Steamwake" restaurants? Vote on overturning our new "No Steamwake" law? Sorry, we took a vote on that and you're not allowed. Majority rules FTW!

IIRC California passed some law that requires a public referendum on just about everything.

According to Loving vs. Virginia in 1967, it is. And if you want a preview of how the Supreme Court's gonna rule this one, substitute "sexual orientation" for "racial classification" in their decision on that case back in 1967:

Family values in the context of Prop 8 (and similar propositions across the nation) needs a firm swat to the behind for being rude and selfish. :shifty:


Most of the nation went to work today. :rolleyes:


All that's quaking right now are the Jell-O shots. :woot:

The judge did the right thing. Prop 8 represents a movement to deny unalienable rights to American citizens, based on a notion that same-sex marriage runs counter to what is considered by some to be appropriate. The right of 7 million voters, in this case, was the right to fair representation in the court, and they got that much -- and more if you count the fact that they already had a legal right to marry. They can cry all over their pancakes all they like, but justice was served.

So what did they lose? Nothing. But their feelings are hurt and they will complain about it until they get their way. Family values indeed. :03:

Well, not quite. They lost a tiny bit of their government's willingness to cooperate in their ongoing delusion that they are inherently superior to people who aren't exactly like them and are therefore entitled above and beyond those people on account of it.

For folks whose entire sense of self-worth is founded on the notion that their "us" must, must, MUST be better then anybody else's "them," and on the world constantly validating this notion so as not to hurt their pwecious fee-fees, that's a whole heck of a lot.

Marriage is a neutral and negative right by virtue of the fact that it's a private contract and often part of a religious institution. Granted, the latter is not specifically spelled out anywhere, but it is implied in many court decisions, and it should be spelled out. In addition, it's a key principle in the philosophy of Locke, whose ideas were integral in developing the Constitution.

Like many neutral and negative rights, however, it has a tendency to come under attack by people who want to dictate the nature of others' beliefs and decisions for some reason, often accomplished by supplying an imaginary or unquantifiable threat. Just look at all the contention over First-Amendment rights. Even when something is considered to be a sacrosanct, God-given natural right, whose regulation is strictly forbidden by the supreme law of the land, it gets questioned and even taken away on occassion. Seeing a vote on such an issue is not all surprising.