Gaymarriage Doubleplusungood
David Weigel | August 4, 2008, 9:56am
The latest scrap over California's Prop. 8—the "traditional marriage" amendment—is about the language that will greet voters when they go to the polls. Prop. 8 proponents
wanted it to say this:
Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
California Attorney General Jerry Brown changed it to say this:
Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same-sex couples to marry. Provides that only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California. Fiscal Impact: Over the next few years, potential revenue loss, mainly sales taxes, totaling in the several tens of millions of dollars, to state and local governments. In the long run, likely little fiscal impact to state and local governments.
Proponents see that, correctly, as a poison pill that will turn undecided voters against their measure. They're suing to change it back. Brown's having none of it.
"What has happened is the Supreme Court found that the right to marriage includes same-sex couples," the attorney general said in an interview. "This happened after the original title was approved. ... Now same-sex couples have a right that's recognized and supporters of the proposition want to eliminate that right."
Prop. 8 supporters, Brown said, "can't say with a straight face that this isn't about eliminating the right to gay marriage, so what's their problem with this? This is a political lawsuit, not one about serious legal issues."
Boi From Troi comments
here; California's businesses express their support for the "fiscal impact" argument
here.
James Anderson Merritt | August 4, 2008, 8:47pm | #
I wanted to add that I think that I think Jerry Brown is overstepping his authority to change the description of the measure. The originally proposed ballot summary -- "Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" -- is a statement of literal truth about the measure. While the courts may have found a right to same sex marriage in the State Constitution, it was not through the discovery of any directly purposed language, but rather through the indirect implications of case law precedent after successive attempts to interpret various portions of the Constitution. The measure in question doesn't strike out those various parts of the Constitution; its "active ingredient" is a single, short sentence. The full text (found at the AG's own website) is as follows:
===
SECTION I. Title
This measure shall be known and may be cited as the "California Marriage Protection Act."
SECTION 2. Article I. Section 7.5 is added to the California Constitution. to read:
Sec. 7.5. Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.
===
Indeed, the entire text of the measure could be printed on the ballot, instead of an interpreted summary. If a summary is necessary, however, nobody expects such a thing to cover all of a measure's possible implications and ramifications. That task is traditionally and more properly handled in the legislative analyst's summary and the pro/con main and rebuttal arguments, all of which are made available to voters in the official ballot pamphlet.
The so-called "summary" that AG Brown approved is not the more concise restatement of the measure itself in simpler words, which such summaries should ideally be, but rather a biased and somewhat disingenuous description of the measure, in the sense that voters are assumed to be naturally pre-disposed not to eliminate existing rights, and tend to interpret words such as "changes the constitution to eliminate {a} right" as meaning that the words which already clearly establish said right in the constitution would be altered or stricken. That's not the case here at all.
While I think that government should be out of the marriage business altogether, and that it is a BIG MISTAKE to enshrine a particular definition of marriage (even the traditional one) in the State Constitution, I nevertheless think that Brown and the gay marriage boosters are actually using the slimier tactics in this case. The measure is remarkably short and written in unequivocally clear, simple language. Let it speak for itself; let the people read it and make up their own minds. Anything else is trying to influence the outcome of the election under color of authority; the people attempting to do so have no room to complain about "unfairness" toward their side.
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