The on-going drama of Prop 8. The opponents of Prop 8 are willing to gut the state’s voter initiative process in order to defend the same sex “marriage” decision imposed on the state by the Supreme Court back in 2008. Let’s see: the State Supreme Court overturned a citizens’ legislative initiative and declared the male/female requirement for marriage to be unconstitutional. So, the people used the initiative process and passed a constitutional amendment. The purpose of the initiative process is to allow the citizens some redress against the government, when they believe the govt is out of control.
Now, the opponents of Prop 8 challenge the amendment in court. The Powers That Be in the State of CA refuse to defend Prop 8 in court. The Attorney General, herself a charter member of The Powers That Be, has declared that the proponents of the initiative do not have standing to defend Prop 8 in court. By this reasoning, all the Powers That Be have to do is to lodge a challenge to an initiative and the initiative becomes void because no one has the right to defend it. By my reckoning, that pretty much guts the initiative process. Let’s look at the AG’s reasoning:
Kamala Harris, a Democrat who succeeded Gov. Jerry Brown in January as attorney general, submitted an amicus brief Monday in the ongoing legal dispute over the voter-approved ban known as Proposition 8.
In it, she argued that only public officials exercising the executive power of government have authority to represent the state when laws passed by voters or the Legislature are challenged. …
Harris contended in her brief that rather than empowering citizens, granting the sponsors of initiatives the ability to overrule the governor and attorney general’s judgment “would rob the electors of power by taking the executive power from elected officials and placing it instead in the hands of a few highly motivated but politically unaccountable individuals.”
Is there anything the advocates of same sex marriage are not willing to do, any value they are unwilling to destry, in order to get their way? They have convinced themselves they have a “right” to same sex marriage because one court said so. Once they have the legal result they want, they want the entire legal process to come to a grinding halt, and circle the wagons around that one favored result. No further discussion. No further dissent. No further legal processes.
This reminds me of Saul Alinsky’s admiring description of Lenin’s tactics: (pg 37 of Rules for Radicals)
“They have the guns and therefore we are for peace and for reformation through the ballot. When we have the guns then it will be through the bullet.” And it was.