As we know, California governor Schwarzenegger has said that for the second year in a row he will veto legislation passed by the state Assembly and Senate that would allow gay marriage. Schwarzenegger has said he must abide by the will of the people who passed by a 61% majority a State initiative in 2000 that barred California from recognizing same-gender marriages performed in other states. (At the time it was believed that Hawaii would soon allow gay marriage.) The initiative was backed and heavily financed by organizations from outside California, particularly Mormons, who sent thousands into the state to canvass and collect signatures. Schwarzenegger says he will never sign a gay marriage bill from the legislature, the people who were elected to represent the people.
As I pointed out yesterday, the idea that a minority's basic rights should be subjected to popular vote is abhorrent and wrong. Case in point - In 1948, if California voters had been allowed to vote on inter-racial marriage when the California Supreme Court struck down the anti-miscegenation law and found in favor of inter-racial marriage, over 72% of the voters would have voted to continue the ban on inter-racial marriage.
People should not have to go to the voters to win approval for their basic rights. But Schwarzenegger, who ran for governor on a pro-gay platform, disagrees. Mayor Gavin Newsom of San Francisco says that Schwarzenegger has missed an historic opportunity to be on the right side of the gay-marriage issue. Eventually he will be remembered as a supporter of bigotry. If Schwarzenegger had studied the Constitution he would know that it is unconstitutional for the majority to deny a minority equal protection under the law.
Speaking of anti-miscegenation laws, the reason Ed and I can not go to Massachusetts and get married is because former governor Mitt Romney, who also ran on a gay-friendly platform, used his power as governor to revive that state's old anti-miscegenation laws to block non-residents from getting married in Massachusetts. Originally designed to keep mixed-race southern couples from coming to the state to get married, the law remained on the books, but had been completely ignored for decades. Romney, who ran for governor as "more gay friendly than Ted Kennedy", did everything he could to block gay marriage, and after the court mandated it, he revived the old law to block gay people from coming to his state to get married. Don't you just love politics?
