Mawwiage is what bwings us togetha...

I'm really quite confused about the "legislate from the bench" argument that's happening here. The ruling is actually quite clear in what its speaking to. Namely, that CA already has great domestic partnership benefits, which convey *almost* all of the same benefits as marriage. (Did you know that, because same-sex marriages are not federally recognized, if my same-sex spouse dies, I can't receive their Social Security benefits? I fucking HATE paying taxes to this fucktard government.) Back to the issue at hand ... CA Supreme Court has basically ruled that the WORD "marriage" must be bestowed on same-sex couples who enter in a binding agreement to share their lives together, and that domestic partnerships, while conveying the same benefits, amounts to a separate-but-equal system that is not constitutionally sound.

Conservative groups are mad because the ruling reverses a voter-driven ballot initiative that was passed a few years ago that made same-sex marriages illegal. What the Supreme Court ruled on is that this ballot initiative, in and of itself, was illegal TO BEGIN WITH, because it violated the state constitution, and also based on prior rulings of the court. (One of the primary rulings referenced was the one that legalized interracial marriage.)

What's even more interesting is that the dissenting opinions were actually not as bad as I thought. They generally hinged on semantics surrounding the majority opinion, use of the political process, and one of the dissents was from a pro-same-sex marriage justice, who disagreed with the way the majority opinion was phrased, because she thought it was demeaning to same-sex couples (I think).

On another note, it's pretty clear that we need to start making up a new word for church-sanctioned marriages. How about we start calling them mawwiage?

I simply *don't* understand why people get so mad about somebody else's business. I thought conservatives were for small-government, stay-out-of-my-business government - and here the conservative groups are all up in everybody else's fucking business about who they marry.

And for the jink-jankers who think animals are next, the chief justice pointedly said that the laws surrounding polygamy and incest are still in place, and not affected by this ruling.