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Prop. 8 sponsors seek to nullify 18K gay marriages.

I wish I were surprised by this attempt to use the law to oppress people. I hope people are right that this won't be done because it would be a retroactive application of the law.

I do have two things to say, though:

1) People keep drawing parallels between the current fight for LGBT rights and the Civil Rights Movement. I believe in a lot of those parallels, and I wish someone smarter and more eloquent than I would take Dr. King's Why We Can't Wait as a springboard for explaining why we can't wait now.

2) I want to find all the people I saw say that those fighting for marriage equality are as bigoted (or worse OMGWTFBBQ) as those who support efforts like Proposition 8 and its ilk, and show this to them, and ask them if we are really morally worse than people trying to dismantle 18,000 families. I do not believe we are. I won't -- I would put friends in the middle of the ensuing fights -- but oh do I want to.

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Even if the judges don't rule in our favor as to the unconstitutionality of Prop 8 as a whole, I can't imagine them invalidating the marriages that were already performed. They were entered into in good faith, and there's no valid legal reason to invalidate them.

From a legal standpoint, I can understand why they're going there. Part of the plaintiffs' argument is that the existence of the marriages performed before Nov 4 creates a second layer of inequality which cannot stand under the current interpretation of equal protection. If you get rid of the old gay marriages that argument holds no weight.

From a moral standpoint, they're hateful, heartless lumps of excrement, wastes of valuable protoplasm, and I hope they all die alone and in pain for what they're trying to do to my family.

But first, may they pass 1000 kidney stones with no medication. Then die alone, in some more pain.

1,000 kidney stones from each kidney.

I despise them.

Amen.

A non-stop sigmoidoscopy done by a clumsy doctor would be more appropriate because it would give those folks what they've created -- a severe pain in the rectum.

A sigmoidoscope with a pointy burr.

Amen.

The Oregon courts invalidated the prevote marriages here, but that was on the grounds that the local officials never had authority to issue the licenses in the first place. In California, single-sex marriage was indisputably legal for several months, and I don't think that constitutionally can be revoked without due process.

The argument I'd like to see attempted is that marriage is recognized as a fundamental right under the Equal Protection Clause, so restrictive classifications require strict scrutiny - and unlike some other states, California already recognized single-sex marriage, so they can't say that the fundamental right applies only to mixed marriage.

The argument I'd like to see attempted is that marriage is recognized as a fundamental right under the Equal Protection Clause, so restrictive classifications require strict scrutiny - and unlike some other states, California already recognized single-sex marriage, so they can't say that the fundamental right applies only to mixed marriage.

That's actually exactly what the court ruled when they overturned Prop 22 and gave us our marriage rights and is the basis of one of the arguments being put forward by the plaintiffs. In order for Prop 8 to go into effect it would have to change at least 2 parts of the state constitution: 1) Alter our (exceptionally strong) equal protection clause to exclude sexual orientation as a suspect class and thus no longer subject anti-gay laws to strict scrutiny. 2) Restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples. It's against the law to change two or more parts of the constitution with a single ballot initiative. That would require either a constitutional convention or two separate amendments.

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