LGBT News What will the Court do with Proposition 8? Today’s oral argument in Plain English

Well, this was always just to be the oral arguments day. The Supremes take oral arguments, and then the decision comes, in most cases, months later.

But the bigger issue here is whether or not the Supremes are going to rule on gay marriage, or on any of several smaller issues. The California case is interesting because when a lower California court struck down Prop 8, the State of California flatly refused to appeal the decision becuase they felt that the proposition was unconstitutional (as does practically everyone else in the country, except the bigoted and ignorant Republican and Christian crazies.)

So when the state refused to appeal the decision, the asshats at National Organization for Marriage, a Mormon and Christian-backed group that pushed to pass the initiative in the first place, stepped in and said they'd defend it.

The courts all the way through the case have questioned whether or not the NOM people have any standing to even appeal the case, since they were not in any way named in the case.

So the Supremes could simply decide whether or not NOM has standing to argue in favor of Prop 8. If NOM has no standing to do so, then the Supremes could dismiss the case, which would also vacate the appeals court decision, and the result would be that Prop 8 would be struck down... but it would not be a precedent-setting case and would leave all the other states with anti-gay-marriage laws untouched.

The Supremes have been pussies about making any sort of precedent setting decisions for the past 20 years or so. It's really rare for them to make a decision with broad implications now; they always find some bogus technicality to rule on, and the result is their decisions are frequently irrelevant except to a specific case. And it sounds like they are inclined to wimp out now and do the same thing... probably because there are a bunch of conservative bigots on the court. Though... they are apparently smart enough to realize that if they ruled the wrong way, there would probably be an unruly crowd with pitchforks and axes coming after their asses.

 

It depends. They could, if they weren't cowards or bigots, rule that marriage is included under the equal protection clause of the Constitution, and that people are entitled to equal protection regardless of their sexual orientation. That would be a broad decision that would invalidate any state laws that make gay marriage illegal, and would result, essentially, in gay marriage being legal everywhere.

Or they could dismiss the current lawsuit on Prop 8, which would have the effect of making gay marriage legal, but only in California.

Or they could rule on Prop 8, and depending on how they ruled, it could either set a precedent for all other states, set a precedent for some state laws but not others, or only affect the California law.

My guess is that, most likely, they will punt.