The million dollar question: Why was Prop 8 on the ballot in the first place?

This question was posed to me by a very good friend from college, whom I still have a special place in my innerds, even though he voted Yes on Prop 8. Part of the issue has to do with the inherent dysfunction of the California Initiative Process, which deserves its own blog post, and I'll be commenting on that real soon. /grin

Here was my response to his question several weeks ago concerning why we would even be allowed to vote on it, if people were going to fight the outcome of the vote:

Well, that's the million dollar question. This is what all the lawsuits are about. The Supreme Court rejected the petition to remove Prop 8 from the ballot and didn't say why. I was reading some legal analyst comments about how they think it is because the courts are not supposed to rule on whether an amendment should have been a revision until it passes and there is legal evidence that supports this (because they can't evaluate the impact of it until it passes).

The reason why Prop 8 is different from voting for the president is because it affects the rights of a group of people. Again, we're not supposed to be voting on each other's rights. It undermines the principles of our government as a constitutional republic, which affects all of us. There are 3 lawsuits right now, and one is from the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Equal Justice Society, California NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. Those organizations represent the rights of minorities like us, and their concern is that the precedent that Prop 8 set undermines the government's ability to protect the rights of all minorities. The other lawsuits were from the ACLU, who are representing couples who were planning on getting married and who cannot marry now. Another is from the Counties of Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Francisco, and Alameda, which are arguing that the measure is a major revision and not an amendment. There is also a petition from the California Council of Churches, which represents both Protestant and Orthodox Christian groups in California, and several other religious organizations that have the same concern about Prop 8 undermining the government's ability to protect the rights of religious minorities.

Anyway, I think a lot of people agree that measures like this should be voted on by our elected representatives first before making it onto the ballot, and the Prop 8 folks knew that they could never get this past the State Legislature because they had already voted on and passed same-sex marriage bills twice. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Actually, for those of you who don't know, according to a study by the Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law, this was a multi-million dollar question, $64 million in state and local government revenues and an economic boost of $684 million in wedding spending and tourism over 3 years, to be exact.