California: Gay Marriage

Though I'm not a resident of California, nor do I have any particular affinity for the state, something important happened there yesterday.

In 2000 the citizens of California passed an initiative, 63%-37%, that banned gay marriage. Yesterday the California Supreme Court struck down that initiative, calling it unconstitutional by citing a similar ruling decades ago that said banning interracial marriages was illegal. Good for the California Supreme Court.

What this means now is that the initiative will go back to the people of California this fall. As my favorite blogger pointed out, each year just over 1% of people become more friendly in their views toward gays. Using that metric about 9% of Californians should now oppose this initiative, making the final tally roughly 54%-46%. Considering this looks to be a Democratic year and California seems like the kind of place that would change their views at more rapid pace, perhaps this initiative will fail this time around.

We can hope. For the life of me, I cannot understand why people care so much about who sleeps in the same bed with who. There are no health risks (ie incest or adults marrying youths, these should be banned) and it certainly does not mean we're on the road to people marrying goats (can anyone say "alarmist" with me?). So good luck California, vote this initiative down!