Leading the Way? California Loses It's Luster

Everyone’s got something to say about the California Supreme Court’s ruling that the voters of that state had the legal right to approve a measure actively limiting the rights of certain California citizens. A lot of the response is predictable and, depending where you stand on the issue of same-sex marriage, entirely defensible.

So we’ll leave it to the legal scholars to parse the technical merit of the not terribly surprising 185 page decision and we’ll leave it to the activists on both sides to make their arguments about the morality of allowing 18,000 gay couples to stay legally married while barring any additional couples from joining that now-exclusive club.

Instead let’s ask a different question: What does mean for everyone else?

California was once known as a pretty progressive place (insert tilted-country-fruits-and-nuts-rolled-to-Cali joke here) and is still known as a bellwether for many social and political trends. One of the most critical tipping points in 20th Century American politics came in California in 1978 when voters passed Proposition 13. This landmark law radically cut property taxes (by 57%) and subsequently caused deep and lasting cuts to the level and quality of many public services in the state. Services like schools that quickly went from first in the nation to worst in the nation. Whatever its intended effect Prop 13 unleashed a tidal wave of anti-tax sentiment across the country and helped reshape the politics of the next thirty years.

Ronald Reagan rode that wave into the White House. George Bush was carried out of office by that wave when he broke a no tax pledge. Democrats and Republicans alike were challenged to say “no” to taxes at every turn. Twenty-three years after Prop 13 George W. Bush continued to capitalize on the voter anger it induced by pushing through the largest, and most regressive tax cut in American history. Prop 13 changed American politics and it all started in California.

But what has the Golden State given us since? Precious little in the way of important change. Direct democracy as practiced in California has become government by proposition — wonderful in concept perhaps but disastrous in practice. Voters, persuaded by multimillion-dollar ad campaigns run by special interests, have driven the increasingly rickety jalopy off the cliff by approving nearly every tax cut and specially-directed spending increase that comes along.

California is totally broke and even the Terminator has not been able to fix it. The Governor and Legislature are returning to Sacramento for a third attempt at passing a budget this year after voters rejected the last deal involving painful service cuts and tax and fee hikes. Like spoiled children they keep demanding more of everything. While the rest of America seems to have learned from our decades-long binge on easy credit — we can have it all and not pay for it!! — Californians are stuck in the past. No longer does the state lead with fresh new ideas or bold political moves. Instead it molders like a rotting tomato fallen from the vine.

And so it is with same-sex marriage. First the court ruled San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom couldn’t just decide for himself to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Then the same court ruled the California Constitution demanded same-sex couples be allowed to marry. Now the same court has decided that voters can overrule the justices on a Constitutional issue such as this. Leading the way? Hardly.

While schizophrenic California has made same-sex marriage a soap opera, states like Vermont, Connecticut, Maine, and Iowa (Iowa for God’s sakes!) have had reasoned discussions and debates and recognized that marriage, as a matter of civil contract law, should not be limited to two people of opposite genders. And in the time Californians have hemmed and hawed and screamed and yelled American public opinion has dramatically shifted with opponents and supporters of same-sex marriage now roughly split. Apparently as goes Maine, so goes the nation.

The same-sex marriage “debate” in California has been the “Real Wives of Orange County” to Connecticut’s and Iowa’s CSPAN. One’s a car wreck that you can neither take your eyes off of nor take seriously while the other is a dry but inevitably substantive exercise.

So while California gears up for another season of “Gay Marriage Propositions” (not a bad title for a totally different show but that’s another story) other states will probably quietly add themselves to the small but growing list of places where gay marriage is the law of the land. New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York (if the State Senate can overcome the objections of a suspiciously hysterical homophobic minister) are the most likely candidates.

Indeed maybe California has, at least, served a function: By being so loud and distracting it has allowed other states to judge the issue on its merits and find that equal rights really does mean “equal”. Not “equal other than the the use of the word ‘marriage’.”