Oct 12, 2009 by Bruce
No kidding? CA justice who redefined marriage doesn’t like voter initiatives.
(Warning: excessive sarcasm alert.)
Those exasperating voters. You know the ones. They sign petitions by the thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands, to get issues they care about on a statewide election ballot. Why? Because they’ve watched their proposed bills get killed in legislative committees. Or they’ve watched arrogant judges legislate the exact opposite of the will of the people. And instead of simply accepting their fate, those uppity voters act like it’s a democracy and demand a popular vote on the issue. Like the definition of marriage, for example.
Thankfully, a certain frustrated California Chief Justice has come up with a remedy: We have to stop allowing voters to do that!
The LA Times reports that the Chief Justice Ron George, who authored the Court’s 2008 opinion which, by a 4-3 vote, redefined marriage in California (at least for a few months), thinks the ballot initiative process (like Prop 8 ) needs to be “reformed” because it “has rendered California government dysfunctional.” As if it wasn’t already.
In prepared remarks before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he cried “fowl”:
“Chickens gained valuable rights in California on the same day that gay men and lesbians lost them,” George said.
Actually, gays and lesbians didn’t lose any rights. California’s domestic partnership laws grant everything but the label “married” to domestic partners.
But George, whose marriage redefinition decision went from primetime to a footnote because of Prop 8, isn’t taking his irrelevance lying down. He wants to change the system so that nothing like that ever happens again.
One thing George overlooks. He’ll need those pesky voters to agree to give up their right to keep him in check.
Good luck with that.
