"So California goes, so goes the Nation"...

[johnnycoup]

Let me first start by saying that I am for gay marriage. I don't think that it is something that should be voted on, I think that it is a basic human right. If you love someone, you should be able to marry them

Comments

[discoflamingo]

First off, they're not activist judges, and what they did was not illegal. They ruled on the constitutionality of a law - that's what the judicial system does; that's what it's there for. If California amends their constitution, and the judicial system shoots down a law anyway, then they will be acting out of bounds.

Second, people should not always have the power - a majority of people wanting something to happen does not make it a law, let alone morally right. If that was true, slavery in the South would still be legal.

Third, straight to Hitler? Fuck that. These judges were not appointed by some magical gay Hitler to enforce the homosexual agenda. What about the Supreme Court judges who made George W. Bush our current president by quashing the recounts in Florida? It's arguable whether they had any right to interfere in Florida's judicial system at all.

[johnnycoup]

This is the absolute definition of judicial activism! Black's Law Dictionary defines judicial activism as "a philosophy of judicial decision-making whereby judges allow their personal views about public policy, among other factors, to guide their decisions, usu. with the suggestion that adherents of this philosophy tend to find constitutional violations and are willing to ignore precedent

[discoflamingo]

When the California supreme court struck down a state law banning interracial marriage as unconstitutional, were they being activist judges then?

Judicial activism is difficult to prove - more commonly, it means "those judges did something I don't agree with". How exactly do you plan to prove that what these judges did was not based on legal reasoning? Have you read their decision? What proof do you have that these judges are in somebody's pockets? Three of the four majority opinion judges were appointed by Republicans - not exactly the homosexual agenda's party of choice.

There is no "fact of the matter" here - this is your opinion, not a fact. Your opinion is that the definition of marriage should be decided by the will of the people - but Supreme Courts are in place to rule on the constitutionality of laws, not the will of the people.

Keep reading the Wikipedia article you cribbed from - there's some good stuff in there from Chief Justice Roberts.