I’ve mixed feelings on California’s State Supreme Court upholding our constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. On the one hand it means same-sex couples have to wait still longer before being granted the basic human rights every m\/f couple enjoys today in our state. On the one hand it gives us, the voters, one more chance to do the right thing by overturning this knee-jerk throwback to a previous era.<\/p>\n
It’s a sobering thought that, if my wife and I had been born into our grandparents’ generation, it would have been illegal<\/a> for us<\/em> to be married in California, because she’s Asian and I’m Caucasian. That ban was also overturned<\/a> by the California Supreme Court, who in 1948 declared that our anti-miscegenation law<\/a> violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Only that time there was no way that 52% of the voters could overturn that right simply by passing a ballot measure.<\/p>\n Fear and ignorance always bring out the worst in us, and the rights enshrined in a democracy’s constitution are there, in part, to prevent a majority from acting on those base emotions in a way that tramples a minority. In this case, the State Supreme Court has declared that we voters need to grow up and do the right thing ourselves. I hope we do it soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’ve mixed feelings on California’s State Supreme Court upholding our constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. On the one hand it means same-sex couples have to wait still longer before being granted the basic human rights every m\/f couple enjoys today in our state. On the one hand it gives us, the voters, one more chance to do the right thing by overturning this knee-jerk throwback to a previous era.<\/p>\n It’s a sobering thought that, if my wife and I had been born into our grandparents’ generation, it would have been illegal<\/a> for us<\/em> to be married in California, because she’s Asian and I’m Caucasian. That ban was also overturned<\/a> by the California Supreme Court, who in 1948 declared that our anti-miscegenation law<\/a> violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Only that time there was no way that 52% of the voters could overturn that right simply by passing a ballot measure.<\/p>\n Fear and ignorance always bring out the worst in us, and the rights enshrined in a democracy’s constitution are there, in part, to prevent a majority from acting on those base emotions in a way that tramples a minority. In this case, the State Supreme Court has declared that we voters need to grow up and do the right thing ourselves. I hope we do it soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}