California, Here We Come

Associated Press

Supporters of same-sex marriage in Marysville, Calif.

The Supreme Court could have edged into the gay-marriage debate by taking just one of the cases before it—the challenge to the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act--but instead it is jumping in further by agreeing to decide whether California’s gay-marriage ban is constitutional. The California case gets closer to the issue of whether gays have a constitutional right to marry but not necessarily all the way, as a look at the history of the issue in the state suggests. The California legislature passed gay marriage bills in 2005 and 2007, only to have them vetoed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In May 2008, the state supreme court found the California Constitution contained no authority to bar same-sex marriages. Thousands of same-sex couples got married. The rush came to a halt in November when a voter initiative, Proposition 8, amended the state constitution to limit marriage to the union of a man and a woman. A high-profile challenge to that measure came . . . . .

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2012/12/07/california-here-we-come/?mod=WSJBlog

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