August (Web-only) 2004

ARTICLE TOOLS

Find similar articles E-mail this page

California Supreme Court: San Francisco mayor broke the law
Yesterday, as you've undoubtedly heard by now, the California Supreme Court ruled that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom broke state law by issuing 3,995 marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The ruling is absurdly long, but it doesn't solve much. Chief Justice Ronald George explicitly wrote that the decision doesn't address "the substantive legal rights of same sex couples"—it just says that the marriages done earlier this year were invalid because Newsom didn't have the authority to grant them. A bunch of lawsuits filed yesterday aim to solve the question about whether Newsom's rationale for gay marriage—that California's constitutional prohibitions against discrimination trump the 1977 state law defining marriage as a union between a man and woman.

For now, it's a basic junior high social studies lesson: the legislative branch makes laws, the judicial branch interprets laws, and the executive branch implements and enforces the laws. These days, of course, the judicial branch makes the laws, the legislative branch tells them what laws they can't interpret, and the executive branch gets all the attention without actually doing much. Seriously, when the debate over abortion law focuses on the presidential election because of what judges he'll appoint, isn't something a bit amiss?

Oh yeah, we were talking about the California Supreme Court decision. Lots of opinion from the usual conservative Christian groups here. Here are the main news links:

• California Supreme Court rules gay unions have no standing | The court said that the mayor of San Francisco overstepped his authority by issuing gay couples marriage licenses (The New York Times)