CA follows MA off the deep end

By a 4-3 decision, the California Supreme Court has overruled the carefully-considered laws of the State of California, which recognized conjugal marriage and same-sex domestic partnerships, and has imposed its own moral views on the people of that State. This act of judicial tyranny makes California the second state, after Massachusetts, to enshrine in law the morally-partisan claim that same-sex intimacy is morally valuable conduct, which deserves equal approbation in law to conjugal monogamy (the committed union of one man and one woman).

The court left no doubt about its moral partisanship. From the introduction to the majority opinion:

One of the core elements of the right to establish an officially recognized family that is embodied in the California constitutional right to marry is a couple’s right to have their family relationship accorded dignity and respect equal to that accorded other officially recognized families, and assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples while reserving the historic designation of “marriage” exclusively for opposite-sex couples poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect.

Of course, California's conjugal marriage law never denied to any of its citizens, homosexual or hetereosexual, equal respect and dignity. What it did was to endorse the proposition that conjugal marital sex is intrinsically valuable while other sexual acts are not. The California Supreme Court thinks it knows better.

The court has done a grievous disservice to the people of California, especially those citizens tempted toward homosexual acts and those who reside at the margins of society, who need the encouragement of the law to take responsibility for their actions and to choose to marry.

UPDATE: It strikes me that advocates for same-sex marriage have committed a strategic blunder, in light of the popular referendum that will appear on the November ballot in California. That referendum would amend the state constitution to anneal the traditional definition in the state constitution. It is now almost certain to pass, and to motivate conservative Californians to get out and vote. Defense of (the special status accorded to) conjugal marriage always gets people to the polls. Defense of marriage from judicial overreach really gets 'em goin'.

So, unless (heaven forbid) the United States Supreme Court creates same-sex marriage nationwide, this California decision looks an awful lot like the high water mark for the same-sex marriage project. Even if Connecticut follows suit later this year, other states are unlikely to do so. The high courts of New York and New Jersey have already declined to create same-sex marriage in those states.

Along similar lines, Election Law Blog wonders whether the California Supreme Court just did John McCain a favor.

This helps John McCain because those conservative voters may not have come out in great numbers for him, but they will come out now to vote for this amendment, and they are more likely to vote for McCain than for the Democrat once they are already voting. That's not to say that California will go red, but it is to say that the Democratic nominee will have to devote more resources to this very expensive to campaign in state.