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Skirt Judicial End Runs Around Gay And Lesbian Marriage

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By JOHN HERBERT

From Where I Sit

Published: June 3, 2008

Judges should interpret laws, not make them.
But that's what happened in California recently when the state's Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay and lesbian marriage.
The justices rejected both a 30-year-old "defense of marriage" law plus a 2000 referendum in which more than 60 percent of California voters reaffirmed that a marriage between a man and a woman is the only kind of "marriage" their state should accept.
The judges said that same-sex marriages are a basic civil right.
Florida voters may be confronted with a similar referendum later this year. Eleven states approved the banning of gay and lesbian marriage in the 2004 national election. In all, 40 states have voted to adopt a definition of marriage as between a male and a female. Most of them have even made a constitutional amendment out of the topic.
California, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be letting the same-sex-marriage issue rest with the Supreme Court decision. A gay and lesbian marriage ban is likely to reappear on the ballot, as a constitutional amendment, not as a referendum, this November.
Relatively quiet the last few years, the gay-lesbian marriage question will add asocial dimension to the 2008 presidential campaign. Election issues have thus far largely been focused on the war in Iraq and the economy, including the price of gas.
That can't be good news for the Democrats, who narrowly lost Florida in the 2004 election. Massachusetts courts had approved gay and lesbian marriage a year earlier. John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate in 2004, is a Massachusetts senator (then and now) who probably spent too much campaign time explaining away his state's action.
According to veteran political observers (including me!), the Massachusetts action most likely prompted a larger-than-anticipated turnout of conservative Florida voters to protest same-sex marriage.
If Florida remains a "red" state this year, Republicans should remember to send a flashy thank you note to California' Supreme Court justices, and with it a carte blanche to elect all judges, if they insist on legislating that badly. Obviously, the appointed California judges are out of touch with the will of a large majority of the electorate.
Gay and lesbian rights are gaining support as the years go by. Fine. But I object to having their marriage issues shoved down my throat whenever I turn on the TV.
Even when the clearly right-wing Fox News draws the old "Regis and Kathie Lee" show into the debate. Kathie Lee Gifford apparently lost her job when viewers became bored with constant tales of potty training her children. Overexposure on a particular issue was the killer; gays and lesbians should take note.
One in particular: Ellen DeGeneres lost viewers and sponsors on her previous TV show when she "came out." You'd think she had learned. No way; her response to the California justices was to announce her "marriage" to her long-time girlfriend on the show. Who cares? That decision should have been hers and her partner's to share, without bothering the viewers.
There's a reasonable way to skirt judicial end runs around gay and lesbian marriage, be it in a referendum or in a constitutional amendment. In an ideal world.
In connection with an inevitable next round of simplifications of our tax codes, treat everyone, even conventionally-marrieds, as individuals — with the same benefits to all, regardless of partnership status. Maybe that's too ideal.

A regular columnist for Hernando Today, John Herbert lives in Spring Hill.

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