Friday, May 16, 2008

My Two Cents - Activist Judges?

Let me start off by saying that though I don't much like the idea of Gay Marriage, if it were on the ballot I would probably vote to allow it. With that said, what the California Supreme Court did yesterday is, to me, a total disaster. It is not a constitutional issue. But whatever. What do I know

This is a contentious issue and so I wont go into too much on it but I do want to point a few things.
  1. We discriminate against the number people a person can marry. No polygamy allowed.
  2. Age discrimnation. In the past, each state determined their own age limit for marriage, but I think it is now set at 18 accross the board.
  3. And until yesterday, 49 had gender discrimination. That is what the voters wanted.
  4. Now all states must honor gay marriage. Correct me if I am wrong, but if a couple is married because of "common law" then a state that doesn't practice common law is still obligated to honor that marriage. Will the same happen with gay marriage? Will gays from, lets say, Kentucky get married in Calfornia and then go back home and demand Kentucky to honor their union?

Now I know someone can come along and say "What about race discrimination? What if the voters said that it would be illegal for races to intermarry, would that be OK?" But the answer is, of course not. The 14th amendment protects us from race discrimination, but there is no amendment for gender in the same way. For example, we discriminate for military draft. Men have to register and women do not.

All in all, my point is that the supreme court had no business sticking their noses into this issue and it saddens me that it happened.

UPDATE: More to it.

1 comment:

Maximum Colossus said...

California knows what's best for everybody. Why do people keep fighting it?