Gays in California can marry...

... in 30 days!

Today, the Supreme Court of California ruled unconstitutional the state's ban against same-sex marriage. As of June 14th, if things go without a hitch, the California Republic will be the second US state, after the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to formally guarantee marital equality. I'm so proud. If a constitution guaranteed to me a right, I would want the courts to protect that right by striking down laws that deny it.

Not much more needs to be said about this fact; the CNN article speaks for itself, and I've written about the rights of same-sex couples before. Instead, I will address a common argument that judges are "legislating from the benches". If you, dear reader, believe the Supreme Court's ruling is "judicial activism", allow me to say this: You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Read this excerpt from the ruling (a PDF file):

It... is important to understand at the outset that our task in this proceeding is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership (or some other term), but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution.... Whatever our views as individuals with regard to this question as a matter of policy, we recognize as judges and as a court our responsibility to limit our consideration of the question to a determination of the constitutional validity of the current legislative provisions.

The California Supreme Court doesn't exist in a bubble. It has to interpret what the California Constitution, one of the supreme laws of the California Republic, says. They ruled that to call a marriage-like legal union something other than marriage, based on whether the couple is the same sex or not, violates the Constitution of California. It wasn't their job to say, as if they were in a bubble, whether or not gay couples ought to be allowed to marry, and this is not what they did.

Judicial activism is such a load of bullshit. Notice, dear reader, that this pet criticism of the courts is only offered when the courts give a ruling that people happen not to like. I've casually observed that these people tend to be conservatives, by the way. They, like the rest of us, want a constitution to say what they believe in. But the fact is constitutions almost never do. No matter how much I believe in maximizing liberty and allowing all committed couples to marry, including same-sex ones, and no matter how much I wish the Oregon Constitution said the same thing, I'm smart enough to recognize that, in fact, it only recognizes opposite-sex marriages. I would, thus, not be mad at the Oregon Supreme Court for striking a law down allowing gays to marry. It would be their job to interpret the Oregon Constitution, and the matter would be out of their hands. The matter was out of the hands of the Supreme Court of California, regardless of whether each justice personally believed it was morally right or wrong.

So if you are going to post a comment whining about "judicial activism", don't.

— Athelwulf