A more in-depth take than some other news-re****ting services:
On Thursday, by a 4-3 vote of the state Supreme Court, California
followed Massachusetts and became the second state in which same-***
couples can tie the knot as tightly as straight couples can. The
Massachusetts opinion of 2003 will always have the fame of a first
mover. In it, the state high court found that the exclusion of gays
from marriage deprived them of both liberty and equality rights
protected under the state constitution. The California Supreme Court
came to the same conclusion, but in terms that have more legal bite
and greater political consequence.
The legal difference between the two opinions lies in the so-called
"rational basis" review used by the Massachusetts court and the
"strict scrutiny" deployed by the California Court. In constitutional
parlance, these terms describe how closely a court will examine state
legislation: will it give the legislature the benefit of the doubt, or
not? Rational basis review is so lenient that it almost always results
in the validation of state policies (in this sense, the 2003
Massachusetts ruling was an aberration), while strict scrutiny is so
stringent that it almost always results in the invalidation of such
policies. In other words, the standards supposedly only express how
closely the court will look at laws, but looks can kill.
Writing for the California high court, Chief Justice Ronald M. George
first found that the exclusion of gays from marriage violated their
fundamental right to marry, thereby drawing strict scrutiny from the
court. This meant that the state would have to produce a compelling
reason to bar gays from what the court deemed "the most socially
productive and individually fulfilling relation****p that one can enjoy
in the course of a lifetime." In a crucial move, Chief Justice George
rejected the state's argument that tradition was such a reason.
Allowing tradition to thus entrench itself, he said, would have
allowed for laws barring interracial couples. And, as he noted, the
California Supreme Court struck down a ban on interracial marriage in
1948, almost two decades before the U.S. Supreme Court did in Loving
v. Virginia.
Continued::
http://www.slate.com/id/2191530/
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