The California Supreme Court held today that, yes, voters can actually amend the California Constitution by the initiative and referendum process. Like is outlined in the Constitution.
It's stunning, I know, for a court to decide that a document means what it says, rather than just making up something else. The answer for gay marriage supporters to to create another referendum, get the signatures, put it on the ballot, and get enough voters to vote for it. Again, a stunning observation.
Over at Pandagon the nutroots are going berzerk. The comments are crazy, with poor Dana getting attacked for actually using logic when confronted with indignant harrumphing from the lunatics. Here was my favorite exchange:
Magis wrote:Then to make matters worse the gays that are married can stay married. But new gay marriages can’t be performed. Is that sane jurisprudence. How can you manage not only to create two disparate classes but create them out of the same subset of people?
Easily enough. If a state allowed first cousin marriage, and then changed the law to restrict marriage to people no more closely ralated than second cousins, the previous first cousin marriages would still be considered legal marriages. Similarly, a state which allows marriages no closer than between second cousins will still not normally fail to consider legal first cousin marriages from another state as legal in the first state.
This has a current application, in that New York state recognizes same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries, even though it does not recognize such as being legally performed in New York.
This was an easy enough analogy. All states have some limitations on consanguinity, determining how close relatives can be to get married. It's an analogy that should be easily understood, even by the Pandagonistas. Yet they came unglued that such an analogy would be used!
Before anyone gets upset, I’m sure that Dana isn’t trying to imply that marriages between blood relatives (which are generally considered taboo on the basis of genetic science) are somehow analogous to marriages between same-sex couples (which are generally considered taboo on the basis of superstition). That would be stunningly moronic.
Right, Dana? Just tryin’ to help ya out here.
What was stunningly moronic was that any human being would complain that Dana's analogy was, somehow, a slur against homosexuals, rather than simply an object lesson into how state laws can invalidate certain marriages while recognizing others.
I suppose expecting the Pandagonistas to act normal, as opposed to hysterical ninnies, is expecting too much, since they are incapable of civil behavior under the best of conditions. But attacking Dana? Dana? The man who never tells them to STFU on his own site? Who allows Blubonnet to hijack every comment thread with 9/11 Truther garbage? The guy who doesn't ban reprehensible trolls? It just really shows what's wrong with Pandagon.
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