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Same-sex marriage is now legal in California:

The California Supreme Court decided today that same-sex couples should be permitted to wed, ruling that gay unions must be given the “respect and dignity” of marriage.

In a 4-3 vote, the court became the first in the country to apply the constitutional protections reserved for race and gender to sexual orientation. The Massachusetts high court struck down bans on same-sex marriage in 2003, but under a different legal theory.

The court held that people have a fundamental right to marry the person of their choice and struck down marriage laws limiting matrimony to opposite-sex couples as a violation of the state constitution’s equal protection guarantees.

“One of the core elements embodied in the state constitutional right to marry is the right of an individual and a couple to have their own official family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that accorded the family relationships of other couples,” wrote Chief Justice Ronald M. George, joined by Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno.

State laws that have limited gay unions to domestic partnerships “impinge upon the fundamental interests of same-sex couples,” George wrote.

Obama’s statement about the ruling was not what I would have wanted it to be, but it’s not surprising, since he has always supported civil unions and the right of states to decide how to define marriage. And Sen. Clinton’s position, of course, is exactly the same.

Barack Obama has always believed that same-sex couples should enjoy equal rights under the law, and he will continue to fight for civil unions as President. He respects the decision of the California Supreme Court, and continues to believe that states should make their own decisions when it comes to the issue of marriage.

I don’t know how same-sex couples can enjoy equal rights under the law if they don’t have the same right that opposite-sex couples have to marry the person of their choice.

Still (and obviously), Obama’s statement was a whole lot better than John McCain’s:

“John McCain supports the right of the people of California to recognize marriage as a unique institution sanctioning the union between a man and a woman, just as he did in his home state of Arizona. John McCain doesn’t believe judges should be making these decisions.”

I’m betting that there is more respect for the sanctity of marriage in Ellen Pontac and Shelly Bailes’s 34-year relationship than in either one of John McCain’s marriages. For one thing, I’ll bet that neither Pontac nor Bailes used the sanctified word “cunt” to refer to each other.

Glenn Greenwald notes that the California Supreme Court’s ruling was governed by the provisions of that state’s constitution, not the U.S. Constitution, and how those provisions have been interpreted in prior rulings:

As the Court made clear, whether someone believes that “marriage” should include same-sex couples is completely irrelevant. It is equally irrelevant whether one believes that the U.S. Constitution can be read to require same-sex marriages. There is one issue, and only one issue, that matters here: are the provisions of the California State Constitution, in light of how they have been interpreted by that state’s Supreme Court in prior decisions, violated by the exclusion of same-sex couples from the legal institution of “marriage”?

In other words, today’s decision reflects a non-activist stance toward the law:

… For reasons I’ve written about before, anyone who criticizes the Court’s decision without reference to California constitutional law is engaged in rank sophistry or, to use a more familiar term, pure “judicial activism” (i.e., judging a constitutional question based on one’s preferred outcome rather than the requirements of binding constitutional law). Put another way, those who criticize the Court here of “judicial activism” without bothering to familiarize themselves with relevant California constitutional law are themselves engaged in the purest, and lowest, form of “judicial activism.”

Tons and tons more news and commentary at Memeorandum.

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