Yay!

[telepresence]

Prop 8 ruled Unconstitutional.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/02/gay-marriage-prop-8s-ban-ruled-unconstitutional.html

“Proposition 8 served no purpose, and had no effect, other than to lessen the status and

Comments

[cdk]

I'm not sure who actually wants to lets the states decide

People who still have "Impeach Earl Warren" stickers on the bumper of their Cadillac, I'm assuming. Less glibly, people who care more about "states rights" than this particular issue, and people who believe that the states would have eventually come to a reasonable decision about abortion if the fed hadn't intervened with Roe.

The 9th Circuit panel actually got it wrong when they said that Prop 8 doesn't have any impact other than pure opprobrium

It would be interesting to see if, by renaming "marriage" to some other term for all parties, a state could deny its residents the right to have those unions recognized by other states. They did pretty much jump from the California ruling that Prop 8 had no impact -in California- other than to remove the designation of "marriage" to a conclusion that it had no impact at all other than to remove that designation, you're right. I'm not sure that "attempt to deny the residents of this state protections under FFAC that they aren't currently entitled to anyway" could ever be a legitimate purpose for enacting discriminatory legislation, though.

[literalman]

Well, the "let's get rid of 'marriage' for everybody" is the classic libertarian answer to hard social problems (e.g. they'd like to just get government "out of the business").

But I don't think that it would be constitutional ... the SCOTUS ruled in Loving that marriage was a fundamental right, so I don't think that a state could "unmarry" all of its citizens.

Federalism is hard :-)