Yesterday, the California Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that same-sex marriage is legal, on the basis of a strict-scrutiny analysis of the Constitution. This will make it essentially impossible for California to keep any kind of anti-gay-marriage laws on its books, and could lead to other states abolishing their laws discriminating against gay marriage.
Damn right! I foresee a lot of happy marriages by Californians who are finally free to marry anyone they damned well please, without the government (or their bigoted neighbors) being able to stop 'em. The very idea that the government should be in charge of whether consenting adults should or shouldn't be allowed to marry is just bizarre.
the Chief Justice kept going. He explicitly found that discrimination against gays, on the basis of their sexual orientation, was equivalent under the California state constitution to discrimination against racial minorities. To my knowledge, California's is the only state high court to have come to this conclusion (the federal Supreme Court has not weighed in). For gays, this pronouncement is critical because it is portable–that is, gays can now challenge any California state policy that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation. As Marty Lederman points out elsewhere in Slate, this in its own right is a signal advance for gay people.
The magisterial conviction of Thursday's opinion would be extraordinary no matter what court had delivered it. But its issuance from the high court of California is nothing short of revolutionary. Recent polls show that the California Supreme Court is the most respected state high court in the country. This suggests that other courts may borrow its strict scrutiny standard, under which most bans on same-sex marriage would fall. Even if no other court adopts today's reasoning, the mere fact that millions can marry in the Golden State will have its own effects. California is the most populous state in the nation and one of the top 10 economies in the world (alongside nations like Canada and Italy). Because of its cultural, political, and economic influence, what happens in California does not stay in California.
(Thanks, Philbert!)
