Posted on 05/23/2008 3:23:01 AM PDT by rellimpank
Last week, four of the seven justices on the California Supreme Court engaged in a blatant act of judicial activism, overturning state law banning same-sex marriages. Chief Justice Ronald George declared: "In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes [emphasis mine] that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon an individual's sexual orientation."
Really? And on what did George base this assertion? Obviously not on the will of Californians and their elected representatives, expressed in the form of legislation passed in 1977 and a referendum that won 61 percent of the vote in 2000, both of which barred same-sex marriages
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
Great article! While he will be attacked for it, his point is valuable regarding Judicial Imperialism.
What good is voting and legislation, if the court ignores it. The matter needed to be returned to the people, not legislated from the bench. The judges didn’t use the rulebook, they disregarded it. He is right, that is power they don’t have.
Since the citizens' elected representatives decided the matter as per the will of the citizens - utilizing their republican form of government, hasn't the CA Supreme Court invalidated their republican government?
Correct. What California has now is a Socialist form of Government where the citizens and non-citizens are equal without any representation. The only difference is the citizens pay taxes and the non-citizens receive illegal Government payments.
All the judges did in this case was say The law enacted by the state legislature did not follow the state Constitution. If the elected representatives wanted to ban gay marriage, they have to change the state constitution.
This is not judicial activism. The judges acted in a strict accordance to the laws.
Look at it this way, in Washington DC they had the most restrictive handgun ban in the nation, the elected representatives liked it, the mayor liked it, the vast majority of people liked it, the cops liked it, but that law violated the US Constitution, so the judges threw the law out. Now not one freeper would dare call those Judges Activist.
But what's the difference between the two? Oh yeah we like guns more than gay marriage.
Not really. What the court said was...
"Our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation," George wrote for the majority.
Their statement admits in its wording that this is an expanded interpretation of the text, otherwise the word "now" is superfluous. If it is something that is "now" understood, then there was an earlier time when it was not understood. Your acceptance of expansive, elastic definitions is what allows the left its unrelenting quest to remake this country through the courts.
Accepting anything but original understanding of the text is what permits the far left to argue that when the US Constitution remarks about "militias" it is speaking of the National Guard (something understood now) instead of every able-bodied person over the age of 18. Either the text has an intrinsic meaning or it has an expansive and elastic meaning. Which means it has no meaning which cannot be redefined in the moment.
After a referendum and state laws opposing gay hook-ups (gay and marriage should not appear next to each other), how can these "judges" say that?
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