Thursday, September 08, 2005

Same-Old Politics: I support same-sex marriage. None of this "civil union" half-way stuff, but legitimate marriage. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I heard that California Governor Schwarzenegger has decided to veto the first bill ever passed by a state legislature to legally recognize same-sex marriage.

His excuse: the voters of California passed Proposition 22 in 2000 defining a marriage as being between one man and one woman.

Well, he's right. And I can't help but think that, as short-sighted as that vote was, that's the way the process works. Just imagine if the situation were reversed. If the voters passed a proposition legalizing same-sex marriage, and the legislature overturned it, that would be a disastrous abuse of legislative authority.

All that said, this as a civil rights issue -- meaning homosexuals should have the same rights as everyone else, regardless of how the populous votes. If the public voted to outlaw interracial marriage (again), I believe the courts should overturn that under the 9th and 14th Amendments, as they did in the past.

So although the Governator made a sound principled decision, he still made the wrong decision. And I believe the courts in this country would be correct to protect the rights of homosexuals by granting them the civil rights they deserve, just like it was largely the courts that pulled us out of the Jim Crow era.

Hopefully the California Legislature's action will keep this issue in the spotlight, and Californians will overturn their own proposition soon. This will take time, but it's a fight worth fighting.