California Family Minute

by Ron Prentice,
Chief Executive Officer

In a 2-1 decision yesterday by a panel of three Ninth Circuit Appellate Court judges, Proposition 8 was ruled unconstitutional, in agreement with the August 2010 decision by the federal district court.

This is no surprise, unfortunately. The majority decision was written by Stephen Reinhardt, appointed by President Jimmy Carter. Reinhardt has earned the title of America’s most overturned appellate court judge. As expected, Judge Michael Hawkins, appointed by President Bill Clinton, followed Reinhardt in lockstep. Judge N. Randy Smith, a George W. Bush appointee, gave a dissenting opinion.

Legal pundits on all sides of this issue believe the U.S. Supreme Court will accept our appeal for review. However, Judge Reinhardt did his level best, according to post-decision analysis, to keep his opinion out of the hands of the highest court. Legal experts believe Reinhardt intentionally limited his decision to California’s definition of marriage, thereby hoping to escape the Supreme Court’s review due to his presumed belief that this decision lacks national implications. 

Indeed, yesterday’s decision does pertain to California’s specific circumstances. For example, Reinhardt claims in the first paragraph of his 80-page decision that - prior to the passage of Proposition 8 - the California Constitution offered the right of marriage to any two consenting adults. According to his opinion, taking this right from certain people must therefore be a deliberate act of discrimination. Of course, it was the California Supreme Court - in a 4-3 decision - that only four months prior to the people’s vote in November 2008 had created homosexual marriage out of thin air. The multiple-year process to place the constitutional amendment defining man-woman marriage onto the election ballot was nearly complete at that time. 

Reinhardt’s second argument focused on the rights and benefits that have already been granted to same-gender registered domestic partners. Since these couples’ rights are relatively equivalent to “marriage,” he argues, there is no “rational basis” to restrict them from the designation of marriage. 

It is true that in the past 13 years the California Legislature has incrementally granted every possible legal benefit to these couples. But that is where the people of California decided it should stop, and the California Supreme Court has ruled 6-1 that limiting marriage to opposite-gender couples is well within our rights.

Since 1911, California’s initiative process has been a constitutional right for the very reasons listed above. When legal courts misuse their authority - as was done in granting homosexual “marriage” - the People can respond via initiative. When the Legislature disregards the will of the People, the initiative process provides us with a direct democracy tool to limit or reverse the Legislature’s reach.

In Judge Smith’s dissenting opinion, he argues that government clearly has a rational, legitimate reason to protect man-woman marriage due to heterosexual relationships’ distinct capacity for procreation and an “optimal parenting” environment (i.e., supplying both a mother and father). He writes, “Throughout our nation’s history, the States have had ‘the absolute right to prescribe the conditions upon which the marriage relation between its own citizens shall be credited…’” In his dissent’s closing, Smith quotes from an 8th Circuit Court of Appeals opinion:

California Family Council’s commitment to the sanctity of man-woman marriage was well represented yesterday as I gave television interviews to KCBS, KNBC, KTLA, and the Associated Press, audio interviews to Family News in Focus, KGED (Fresno), Palm Springs‘ NBC, and a press interview with the Orange County Register.

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