While some argue that the people of California are not worthy of the initiative process the state constitution liberally grants its citizens, the very heart of California's law disagrees. The ballot initiative process is not a twentieth century libertarian whim cooked up by 1960's radicals. Instead, it was adopted to directly address the challenges and pressures of a representative government in the modern era.

California's Constitution's Preamble is the usual: "We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution." This is a wonderful echo of the age of the founding fathers of the United States of America. However section 1 of the first article of California's constitution is not the unusual: "All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for their protection, security, and benefit, and they have the right to alter or reform it when the public good may require." This has a bold and defiant tone, the tone of those who have had enough of pretense and hypocrisy. These are grave and solemn declarations. They are the words of men and women who have had some experience being vigilant in the great and ongoing struggle for liberty. Surprisingly, the rest of California's constitution lives up to these brave words. That's not usual either.

For these very self-evident reasons, any refusal by four judges to enact Proposition 8, by describing it as a revision, would to be to drastically alter the heart of California's constitution.

The Constitution of California is a living document, but its life is not ultimately in the hands of a Supreme Court, and its breath does not wait on a two thirds majority of the state legislature. California's constitution is specifically designed to live and breathe with the people of California. Nor was this done for light and transient causes. California's constitution is borne from the lessons of the undergraduate School of Error and graduate school of Painful Experience in this Land of Opportunity.

Of all the states in the union, California has the most experience with constitutions. California drafted its original constitution in coordination with a military proclamation shortly following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. California then redrafted its constitution only thirty years later. It was in this second draft of its constitution that California began its loathing of political authorities and its love of the initiative and referendum process. Finally, after years of committee analysis, in 1966 California used the mechanisms within the 1897 draft to significantly revise its constitution. This it did with a constitutional convention and approval of the electorate. Ultimately, the revision committee completed the final part of its revision process with a series of tailor made ballot initiatives (CPS 6). Hence, if California's constitution is one of the most liberal in the union, it is a political path based, not on naïveté , but on experience. In other words, if California gives greater authority to its electorate than any other state, it is because California has learned from its history. Its institutions recognize that those in authority are often as impervious to truth as they are imperfect in character. California's limits on its Supreme Court Justices, as set out in terms of recall and elective terms, is not done without a very clear understanding of the challenges to freedom that arise in every generation, even in nations governed as constitutional and democratic republics.

The problem with the founding father's notion of an independent judiciary is that our forefathers benignly believed that the check on judges would be the laws and the constitutional documents they embodied. California discovered that such a check was not always convenient. While, on one hand, California gives its chief justice tremendous powers over the interpretation and the culture of interpretation that surrounds California's laws, the consequences of its painful experiences with the powerful forces of large business interests during the Civil War period left the people of this state with an extremely sober view of every element of representative government, including the judiciary. California's judiciary is one of the least independent in the nation. While judges are appointed by the governor, the judges are subject to reelection every twelve years. Furthermore, they are subject to recall at any time by way of the recall petition process.

It would not be beyond imagination then to conceive of a unanimous Supreme Court decision in favor of the proponents of Proposition 8, and that is as it should be according to California law. In the United States Constitution five judges closely divided with four others in the interpretation of the federal constitution plus the silence of the legislature can equal, in practical terms, via stare decisis, an amendment or a revision or of the constitution. Of course the more divided the judiciary, the more divided the legislature, so, in the course of time, judges have often changed the constitutional rudiments of our federal laws. In California, though, the people must also remain silent for a judicial opinion, an interpretation of the law to become, via stare decisis, an amendment to or a drastic revision of the California constitution.

In the matter of Proposition 8 and Proposition 22, Californians were not silent. They thought long and hard; twice Californians have clarified the definition of marriage. This may have been an altogether silly exercise forced on them from above, but it was, nonetheless, a gracious and constitutional one. All those who oppose that definition ought to accept the verdict in the gracious spirit in which it was legally and duly offered. The definition of marriage Californians have declared doesn't harm anyone, and it does apply equally applied to all. Homosexuals may also get married to one member of the opposite sex, just like every other Californian. Californians do not hold anyone's sexual orientation against them. The people of California have never been perfect, and they are not now. California's constitution though, isn't bad. Other states ought to follow California's example of liberally granting the final say and authority to the people. After all, where do all constitutions that are worth the ink originate?

 "We have now entered the final phase of the boom-bust cycle--the search for villains for past ill deeds and the search for reforms to prevent future calamities. But in the panic to sell shares in U.S. companies, investors are deaf to good news about the resilience and productivity of the American economy just as they were deaf to bad news at the height of the market euphoria.” These words, penned by Laura Tyson in her 2002 article, “After Irrational Exuberance, Irrational Pessimism” are, once again, almost completely relevant to today’s market. Perhaps what’s missing is the good news. Oil going down is apparently something approaching a positive, but that’s it. However, because of the consistency of human deafness to market fundamentals, Ms. Tyson’s article is almost always partially relevant. Here’s the sad little story rife with truths.

From 2003-2005, real estate, like the equity markets of the late 1990’s, had that peculiar reek of impending disaster that emerges from willful ignorance to market forces by those who should know better. A March 2008 REIT Wrecks article commendably explores the death of real estate’s canary: in 2005 rental occupancies fell despite declining rents. The article, “Play Subprime Safely With These Residential REITs” carefully exposes the Spiderman-like tingling those who specialized in rental properties had. They could smell the gas of the broken main. They knew that all that was driving real estate was the money supply. The loan amounts kept increasing as the credit requirements decreased. The only impediment to receiving the cash was having a residential deed to sign.

Interest rates finally began to rise, but they were answered with more easy money. After all, the changing bankruptcy laws of 2005 (making Chapter 7 debt forgiveness more difficult to come by) meant that more foreclosed assets would be available to offset these bad loans. Even more importantly, as far as the speculative eye could see more and more non-standard loans were coming down the pike. Hence, real estate had to continue to rise as the free money bid them well above their actual values. If real estate had to continue to spiral upwards, then even foreclosed properties would be worth more than the original assets. Hence, easy loans were more easily packaged into marketable “securities” that, based on an implied connection between Fannie, Feddie and the Feds, met only the most cavalier inspections. Who’d know? Who’d say anything? The only evidence of this covenant with disaster would be the mushrooming commissions on portfolio mangers’ Christmas bonuses.

However, even the “victims,” those with no credit who took exorbitant interest rates hits, laughed out loud as they signed and swore on a thousand dotted lines. Even they thought they’d hit the Vegas craps. “Why worry?” they thought; they could to sell for a 15% profit in a year. That would be more money in one place than they’d seen in their whole lives! Everyone was doing it… Then oil hit the roof, and the predatory lenders headed for the high grass. Everyone knows the rest.

Just as in the dotcom bubble, those who should have known did know. But why pull the fire alarm and alert the police? Instead, lawless bands of speculators who knew better, weren’t betting on the American dream. No, they were betting they could get out of town before the three alarm conflagration was noised abroad. The parable? Markets don’t need corrections, people do. The moral: unregulated markets will result in great prosperity only in proportion to the sense of responsibility and the recognition of the ethical source of prosperity owned by those that participate.

California, here’s the allegory: As free markets are to ethics, so is a great nation’s government to the truth. As the real estate fundamentals were eroded by senseless monetary expansion, so the credibility of our government will be eroded if we enshrine lies in our laws. Vote “Yes” on Proposition 8.

As depressing as today’s corruption of our markets may be, it has a precedent. As Frank Shostak discusses in his article, “The Prophet of the Great Depression,” two Austrian’s, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, based on their theories of credit expansion, predicted the Roaring 20’s would end calamitously. The Austrians used a cool math based on exchange rates, but the reality is that no wizard-like forecasts are required. Indeed, even the victims of this latest real estate credit bubble knew what they were up against. They knew they were at cross purposes with the basic principles of responsibility, ethics, and, hence, genuine prosperity. We all finally got what all involved already owned.

Individuals cannot live a lie and escape the consequences. Don’t try to tell such people however, for you will be mocked to scorn. Likewise, societies cannot live a lie and long endure. But what if that lie is consecrated by the consensus of one’s fellow creatures, as was the run on equities in the 1920’s and the run on real estate in the twenty-first century? It doesn’t matter; such a nation and such a person cannot prosper. Even if so many thrill with the lie that one might say the lie is “normal,” a lie it is nonetheless, and who are so heedless cannot prosper. Whether it is abandoned at the church door or at the cork of those spirits that cry “you can’t prove it!” discard reason at your peril.

There are many powerful people who purport to believe that religion, "the opiate of the people (Karl Marx)," is a scourge on humanity. Altruists, they purport to genuinely believe that society would be better if all religions, especially Christianity, were expunged from planet earth.

That's not a constitutional view of course. Freedom of religion is as sacred as the freedom of speech. Like the right to marry, it is part of what is innate in people and what is part of who we are as humans prior to government. It's self-evident, no matter what one believes about religion, that governments need to, as much as is possible, keep out of the business of policing religion. Any law or ordinance that puts government into the business of arbitrating religious belief should be shunned. Indeed, governments ought to be in the business of promoting and exalting those freedoms that abound in a free people. This includes the "right to marry" and the practice of religion openly and freely.

The ACLU may believe in the right of same-sex couples to call their unions a marriage too. That's fine; however, if Reverend James Wilson is correct, perhaps it has a more nefarious agenda in mind. Perhaps there is a secret treasure to be exhumed from the corpse of our mangled California family law. With a victory against Proposition 8 in hand, perhaps the ACLU can end religion in public life completely. We will be able to think religious thoughts, but we will not be able to either speak our beliefs or practice them in public.

Reverend James Wilson wrote in his September 15 article "Proposition 8 protects freedom of religion" at Reading.com that:

"The state Supreme Court decision OK'ing civil rights laws for suppression of doctors' consciences is part of an alarming pattern. The decision held doctors liable after they refused for religious reasons to inseminate a lesbian. The doctors referred her; there was no injury to the woman as she was inseminated and gave birth. But the court said doctors lose their right to free speech and religion when licensed to practice medicine in California. And if the experience of northern Europe and Canada is any indicator pastors will lose those rights should Proposition 8 fail in November. That is because courts in those nations have found pastors (and any who express politically incorrect views) guilty of hate speech.':"

One would ordinarily think this is ridiculously alarmist, but reading the series of bilious comments by readers of Wilson's article gave me pause. Here are several:

"Rev. James Wilson, it's a shame you don't follow Jesus' teachings to love one another instead of spreading hate like this column.
Practice what you preach."
You have no idea what the Bible says, do ya...

Rev. Wilson did not quote the Bible, but anyone who has read Romans chapter 1 knows that he did not quote it out of courtesy.

"He's just being a hypocrite."
it IS "hate speech", MR. Wilson (you don't deserve to be addressed as "Reverend" - that title should be reserved for people who attempt to reflect God's love and compassion in their lives).

Rev. Wilson's most controversial line was that "love without truth is not love." I admit that I've picked some of the most obvious examples of spiteful disregard found in the reader comments. Nonetheless, Reverend Wilson's article is simply one of a tremendous variety of instances in which the volume of the spiteful ad hominem attacks increases exponentially when faith is mentioned at all. The raw enmity expressed in any number of reader comments associated with those expressing religious disagreements with homosexuality itself is a firestorm. Whether the religion is Roman Catholic, Mormon, or Muslim, the hate as furious as it is obvious.

In accorddance with my nature,I had to get into the act. I commented:

"The Reverend's article, although restricted to an audience of Bible believing Christians, nevertheless proves its broader point by the overwhelming anger and hate personally directed at its author for his faith. Are we to trust any movement that so indiscriminately hates those who offer reasonable disagreements with it based on personal religious beliefs?"

Since my post was not faith based, the response I received from a fellow reader, "specialK" was reasonable and well-measured:

"It's not for his faith, rather his active campaigning to rescind and eliminate the civil rights of a small minority of citizens when he himself and the majority here enjoy the legal recognition of your primary relationship. To claim that his rights are being impinged on because I now have the same, or shall I say, equal civil (not religious mind you) rights, should not in any way interfere with the Rev's religion. The hate must only be coming from those who suffer from ignorance and fear."

However, "specialK"'s response was not to the point. He, like many, did not see that freedom of speech and freedom of religion could be impacted by the laws of California. He (or she) thinks that it is alarmist to assume that letting same-sex couples say they're married could, in any way, impact freedom of religion. Still, the motive of those seeking to defeat Proposition 8 should be relevant to us. Is the motive of those who seek to defeat Proposition 8 less government? Plainly not. If it is more government, then what is it they most seek to govern? Likewise, all voters might want to ask, what segment of society are the opponents of Proposition 8 most willing disparage?'

My articles have not been addressed to a faith audience, and so, because I understand the nature of our competitive Western society in which we take adversarial positions in order pursue the truth, I haven't been particularly troubled by readers who ignore my arguments and then endeavor to defame me because my thesis is disagreeable to them. That's all part of the American smear machine we call our national discourse. Even though the often decried ad hominem attack is a well-known logical fallacy, it is as beloved of 21st century America as apple pie and college football.

I also recognize that very often the more intense and unnecessarily disagreeable disagreements contain a question not answered in an article. That intensity is not what I'm writing about. There is a significant difference, an intense intolerance, shown by opponents of Proposition 8 to those who have religious beliefs. They feel entitled to this intolerance. Voters who value religious freedom should be hesitant to ally themselves with such disdain of the sacred and those who believe.

Besides, who knows, perhaps there is something sacred about humanity. Who knows maybe there is something true in these ancient religions handed down from the mists of time. I know, I can hear the barrage coming now... This article is not for them; it's for you.

The Supreme Court of California did not increase the value of domestic partnerships; instead, it devalued and dehumanized the notion of marriage, writing marriage, as most understand it, completely out of California law. The result is a massive, unconstitutional, increase in the scope of government. Members of the gay community should be as troubled as every other Californian about this radical increase in government. Surely, this is not what the gay community expected. Additionally, people who would otherwise have had no animus towards the gay community will begin to see it as partners in this court’s deception and tyranny. For instance, in “cheating a little” the court seems to have conferred, on certain Californians, the right to deceive others. 

Deceiving people is what the Court has, directly or indirectly, sanctioned by its discussion of “privacy rights” on page 105 below:

“Plaintiffs point out that one consequence of the coexistence of two parallel types of familial relationship (marriage and domestic partnerships) is that — in the numerous everyday social, employment, and governmental settings in which an individual is asked whether he or she “is married or single” — an individual who is a domestic partner and who accurately responds to the question by disclosing that status will (as a realistic matter) be disclosing his or her homosexual orientation, even if he or she would rather not do so under the circumstances and even if that information is totally irrelevant in the setting in question.”

The opinion of the majority in re Marriage Cases explains that disclosing one’s sexual orientation is protected under a right to privacy, but the Court’s resolution of the issue should not be to sanction intentional deception as a remedy. Under this court’s ruling same sex couples may mislead an employer, whether it is a government office or a private enterprise, by leading individuals to believe that their status is heterosexual. That is, they may rest assured that when they say they are “married,” their employer, insurance company, or fertility clinic will understand the ordinary sense of the word and assume they are heterosexual. Doesn't it seem that the court recognizes that the high goal of “equality” justifies deception as a means to achieving that end? Should we assume that the Court, with its own high view of equality, felt that, for itself too, deception as practically necessary is a dogma worthy of application? Even if we occasionally tell the white lie, Supreme Court Justices are under oath. If we conclude that they purposely employed deception in their ruling, no only should we vote “yes” on Proposition 8, but we should recall these judges.

The deceptions above, seemingly advocated by the Court, could well have potentially serious implications for insurance, credit, and medical institutions. Although the court rightly recognized that some of these requests for information are not relevant, the discretion on when to deceive seems to be entirely in the hands of a member of a same sex partnership.

Some may argue that the destruction of the word marriage would result in “marriage” would no longer implying heterosexuality. Hence, there would be no deception. However, until the process of reconstructing documents in which one’s sexual orientation is necessary information and, instance by instance, allowing courts to decide upon this necessity, many instances of deception on important matters will have been perpetrated and seemingly sanctioned by this Court.

Such deception is simply not a necessary instrument for achieving equality in the United States of America. No one can seriously imagine women seeking equal opportunity by bubbling in "man" on their employment applications. No, in order to equalize the playing field women proudly declared their gender and insisted on access. In fact, African Americans all the more proudly declared their ethnicity as they demanded the equal rights they were entitled to under the law.

Secrecy is no ally of civil rights, so why does the Court appear to confer the right to deceive on a special segment of California? There are other instances of seemingly innocuous kinds of misleading evidence or overly euphemistic uses of legal jargon (such as “family relationships” and “family units). However, the most dangerous element of re Marriage Cases is that it has so altered the meaning of marriage that when most citizens say marriage they mean something that is entirely different than what is meant by marriage in California’s law.

People should vote “Yes” on Proposition 8 because it will put a very deceptive Court Ruling out of business. This is the first of a series of posts which expose elements of the Court’s deceptiveness. This deceptiveness is important to defeat because the deceptive languages and practices employed by the Court will become part of California’s legal structures and culture. This first post handles the use of a new deceptive legal terminology involving the English word “family.”Here, from Dictionary.com:

“Family – 1. parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not. 2. the children of one person or one couple collectively: We want a large family. 3. the spouse and children of one person: We're taking the family on vacation next week…”

There are thirteen definitions of family given on Dictionary.com. All of the definitions, even the idiomatic ones, explicitly include or figuratively imply children. In “re Marriages…” the California Supreme Court defines the union of same sex couples as a “family” relationship. It is by this euphemism that the Court names the congress of couples heterosexual and homosexual.

Could the court have picked a more deceptive title to describe the relationship that is the basis of a domestic partnership? From this relationship no family can ever, by nature, grow.

All through its judicial history California has used the words marriage and family appropriately. For instance, here is a direct quote from a 1995 case cited in Judge George’s opinion:

“And in Warfield v. Peninsula Golf & Country Club (1995) 10 Cal.4th 594, in discussing the types of relationship that fall within the scope of the constitutionally protected right of intimate association (one component of our state constitutional right of privacy (id. at pp. 629-630)), we [Judge George himself is the we because, in his office as a Judge of the Supreme Court of California, he wrote the court’s opinion] explained that “the highly personal relationships that are sheltered by this constitutional guaranty are exemplified by ‘those that attend the creation and sustenance of a family — marriage . . . , childbirth . . . , the raising and education of children . . . and cohabitation with one’s relatives . . . [page 56].

The comment in brackets and the emboldened text added for clarification show that in 1995 the Supreme Court of California, and its current chief justice Ronald George, knew the difference between a marriage and a family. Marriages were part of the creation of a family. The raising and education of children were part of the sustenance of a family. In 1996 Supreme Court Judge Ronald George was elevated to Chief Justice.

However, by 2003 that the legislature of California introduced confused language into the jurisprudence of the state with this uncodified statement of legislative intent:

"This act is intended to help California move closer to fulfilling the promises of inalienable rights, liberty, and equality contained in Sections 1 and 7 of Article 1 of the California Constitution by providing all caring and committed couples, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, the opportunity to obtain essential rights, protections, and benefits and to assume corresponding responsibilities, obligations, and duties and to further the state’s interests in promoting stable and lasting family relationships, and protecting Californians from the economic and social consequences of abandonment, separation, the death of loved ones, and other life crises” [Stats. 2003, ch. 421, § 1, subd. (a) excerpted from page 38 “re Marriages…”].

It is unclear from the immediate context what the legislature intended by “in promoting lasting family relationships…” This may refer to the resolution of problems same sex couples had gaining access to loved ones during hospital stays. The domestic partnership act made one’s partner [Party A] a legal member of party B’s extended family. In that way, despite objections by Party A’s immediate family, Party B had full access and legal authority over Party A’s medical care.

By 2005 the change of language from confused wording to deceptive jargon was completely effected:

As we (Judge George in his office of the Chief Justice of Supreme Court of California in its majority opinion) explained in Koebke, supra, 36 Cal.4th 824, 843: “[T]he decision . . . to enter into a domestic partnership is more than a change in the legal status of individuals . . . . [T]he consequence[] of the decision is the creation of a new family unit with all of its implications in terms of personal commitment as well as legal rights and obligations” (excerpted from page 46 of “re Marriages…”).

In this quote from the 2005 majority opinion in Kobke vs. Bernardo Club Country Club, the court plainly uses the terms family unit and domestic partnership synonymously. What is new in the court’s jargon in “re Marriages” is the wider use of “family relationship” to mean marriage and domestic partnership. It is in this 2008 opinion that the Court has simply decided to dispense with dictionaries, histories, statutes, or linguistic contexts of any type. Whether or not members of this court participated in making this deceptive change in the jargon for the express purpose of deception in “re Marriage Cases” is an open question. The prior use of the unclear language of legislative intent in the 2003 to express the Court’s opinion in 2005 can be argued as an authentic representation of the liberal intent of the California Legislature.

In the evolution of the jargon of the California judiciary, it becomes plain that “marriage” is now only what a court says it is. In the Court’s eyes the consummating act of marriage is not required, nor is it recognized. Sadly, like marriages, “families” too are now no more or no less than what some court decides they are.

Anytime a basic civil right, an inalienable right, whether enumerated in the U.S. Constitutional documents or not, is violated by a government, that government is dehumanized, the citizens participating in that government are dehumanized, and, of course, those having their constitutional liberties abridged are dehumanized. Consider the cases in Nazi Germany in which Jews were made to wear a yellow Star of David. The Nazi’s ignored the basic and self-evident equality among ethnicities in order to single Jews out as less human, deprived of the dignity of equality. The most devious of the Nazi aims, however, had to do with dehumanizing the populace of Germany itself. By refusing to stand up for their fellow humans, the people of German civil society became callus towards the Jews. Ultimately, the Nazi’s themselves became more and more unfeeling towards human life and the plight of their fellow man. Of course the dehumanization of the German Jew was exponentially quickened because essential religious freedom to worship was likewise stigmatized. Two sets of essential civil liberties were abridged by the Nazis at once. Yet, could the Jews have claimed to have been harmed by wearing the yellow star of David? Shouldn’t they have been proud of their religious background? The wearing of the star was the first of a continuing series of Nazi violations of civil liberties, but the dehumanization of the Jew was already complete before the clear harm began. This prima facia violation of human rights was the harm.

Likewise, no matter how one wants to interpret the odd wording of the 2nd amendment of the United States Constitution, humans in a state of nature, without government, have the right to take up arms and defend themselves. Although the choice is intimidating to some, it must be; for that is the essence of self defense. The right to defend oneself is a severe right that elevates all human life by its severity. The choice to bear arms or not to bear arms defines human character, but it is still a fundamental free choice, a liberty that is part of being human. Although, as the U. S. Supreme Court found, to protect the general welfare and to secure the blessings of all our liberties, the state, as authorized by the people, has the right to limit the liberty to bear arms, court or no court, court or no court the right to self defense must not be compromised.

The District of Columbia completely abridged the right to bear arms and the right of self defense thereby. Law abiding citizens, then, are completely reduced to dependency on government for their defense. They become no more than serfs of the Dark Ages dependent on their feudal lords for defense. They become the chattel of the state, the property of the state. Their humanity is compromised. The state too is dehumanized, for it becomes like a feudal lord, above those whom it exists solely to serve. Yet, how are those that were refused the right to bear arms for many years in DC harmed? There is only slight evidence of that harm. The NRA often points to the rise in violent crime in areas in which the right to bear arms is constrained severely. This may be simply the obvious result of the criminals being emboldened by an unarmed populace. However, it may be that the dehumanizing effects of the abridgement of the right to bear arms emboldens those who contemplate violence.

How do these tests of the abridgement of constitutional liberties relate to the recent ban on marriage in California? In both of these instances, laws abridging human rights have plainly existed without any clear harm initially being found. Both instances are also examples of the truth that any abridgement of a civil liberty dehumanizes the state and its citizens. In California there are no more marriages. Men and women cannot receive a marriage license that says “husband” and “wife”; instead, they become “Party A” and “Party B.” This language is plainly dehumanizing, and it is not the happenstance of nomenclature. The ruling of the Supreme Court of California and its accompanying opinion wreaks with violations of civil liberties and a callus, inhuman refusal to acknowledge the very essence of what it means for a man and woman to join in matrimony.

California’s Court has reduced marriage to only that over which the state has authority. It has looked at all the clothing of marriage and called these changing incidentals ‘marriage’; but the Court has ruled to ignore that unchanging reality of marriage that forms the basis of marriage as a constitutional liberty. In every case, a constitutional liberty is such because its reality is greater than man; its power is independent of governments. It is because of such fundamental liberties’ superiority and priority to government that good governments reside in harmony with these native, inborn rights natural to humanity. Good government perceives that these greater, natural, freedoms are the very blessings of liberty that governments exist, solely, to secure. Marriage is such a liberty because it is more than contracts and commitments conferred by the state. The duties of marriage proceed from the joining in marriage, not from government. This joining for which men and woman were designed (whether by natural selection of by the hand of the God of Nature Himself), this is the very essence of marriage the State refuses to acknowledge. Refusing the title of “husband” and “wife” is not the happenstance of nomenclature; it is evidence that the State of California refuses to acknowledge the essence of marriage, the joining in marriage, that is central to marriage as a constitutional liberty.

Because the state of California, through the voice of its Supreme Pontiffs, manifestly recognizes only those social rights involved in marriage, and because the essence of my marriage, my ‘right to marry,’ to join with my partner as husband and wife, is no longer recognized by California law, my constitutional right to marry is completely abridged. It is in the essence of humanity, male and female, to be able to freely join in marriage. California has a right to regulate marriage, even as the District of Columbia has a right to regulate the right to bear arms, but California does not have the right to legislate marriage out of existence, to deny its reality, and to ignore its core humanity. To designate marriage as a simple set of rights society chooses by tradition to assign dehumanizes us all