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Arnold should use his power as govenor to shut the building

He has no such power. City Hall belongs to the city, not the state, and the emergency powers of the Governor do not extent to a dispute like this.

The only way to reverse this is the legal process which has already commenced. It will result in one of two things happening: either the marriages will nullified, or the California DOMA will be invalidated as violating the California or U.S. constitution. Since the plaintiffs have (properly, in my view) chosen state courts as the venue, the case is unlikely ever to reach the 9th Circuit. The State Court of Appeal and the California Supreme Court will decide all of the state and federal constitutional issues. If any federal constitutional issues are dispositive of the California Supreme Court's opinion, than they can be directly appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's actually unlikely, too -- I suspect that the ruling will be confined to the California constitution, with respect to which the California Supreme Court is the highest court in the land.

The judges didn't really have a lot of choice regarding the preliminary injunction petition -- very hard to make a showing that irreparable harm will result to anyone as a result of people keeping illegal marriage licenses for a month or two longer before they're revoked. I think that the March 29th hearing date is quite abusive -- hopefully the Appeal Court will end up ordering a full hearing next week at the latest.