Lopsided Prop 8

Here's the opinion (pdf. How Appealing has uploaded it here.


Thinkprogress:


In a dissenting opinion, Justice Carlos Moreno wrote that the decision "weakens the status of our state Constitution as a bulwark of fundamental rights for minorities protected from the will of the majority." Moreno also rejected the majority's claim that banning full marriage rights was a "narrow" civil rights restriction for gay couples. Regardless how narrow the restriction, he argued, the ruling violates these couples' right to equal protection:
Denying the designation of marriage to same-sex couples cannot fairly be described as a “narrow” or “limited” exception to the requirement of equal protection; the passionate public debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, even in a state that offers largely equivalent substantive rights through the alternative of domestic partnership, belies such a description. [...]

But even a narrow and limited exception to the promise of full equality strikes at the core of, and thus fundamentally alters, the guarantee of equal treatment that has pervaded the California Constitution since 1849. Promising equal treatment to some is fundamentally different from promising equal treatment to all. Promising treatment that is almost equal is fundamentally different from ensuring truly equal treatment. Granting a disfavored minority only some of the rights enjoyed by the majority is fundamentally different from recognizing, as a constitutional imperative, that they must be granted all of those rights. (p. 155-7)


I look for Prop 8 again to be on the ballot.