I now belong to a “special” group of approximately 18,000 who are married in the state of California even though the constitution does not allow us to be married. As Ana Marie Cox tweeted:
“CA Supreme Court follows People vs. KFC precedent: no more gay marriage except for 18,000 who already used coupon.” (via @pourmecoffee)
I know there are probably many good logical spins to explain how/why a court who declared us a suspect class has now upheld discrimination against us, but I do not get it. Page 7 of the opinion is no comfort that they even meant anything they wrote a year ago:
Nor does Proposition 8 fundamentally alter the meaning and substance of state constitutional equal protection principles as articulated in that opinion. Instead, the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term “marriage” for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law, but leaving undisturbed all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection of the laws.
This sounds like an awfully thin curtain of one word dividing first class citizens from second class citizens. So my family has the right to a recognized and protected relationship, but the word, when clearly words matter, is solely reserved for opposite-sex couples, even though that word has clear advantages and rights that are being denied to same-sex couples.
At least Justice Moreno included a piece of Varnum v. Brien (Iowa 2009) 763 N. W.2d 862,877 as the introduction to his opinion:
[T]he ‘absolute equity of all’ persons before the law [is] ‘the very foundation principle of our government.’
My entry into a special class
