Word: processing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...less outrageous - and illegal - than discrimination based on race or religion. Despite the sweep of that ruling, George and five other justices ruled on Tuesday that there is nothing so special about gay-marriage rights that make them exempt from the state's famously disruptive and pliable constitutional-amendment process...
...sense, petitioners' and the Attorney General's complaint is that it is just too easy to amend the California Constitution through the initiative process," wrote George for the 6-1 majority. "But it is not a proper function of this court to curtail that process; we are constitutionally bound to uphold it." Translation: Until Californians themselves change their system for amending the constitution, it will be the people - not the courts - who have final say on even the most fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. (See pictures of the gay-rights movement, from Stonewall to Prop...
...courts for now, it has placed the issue squarely back on the political front burner. Rick Jacobs, president of the Courage Campaign, a 700,000-member political movement, said efforts to put the issue back before voters as soon as 2010 have already begun. "The initiative process in California is flawed," Jacobs tells TIME. "The very idea that a majority can vote to take rights away from a minority is flawed. It really is quite outrageous...
...difficult for changes to weaken the most important rights enshrined in the constitution. But in saying that, the court also rejected an argument by attorney general Jerry Brown, a likely candidate for governor, who had argued the court should itself declare some rights off-limits to the regular amendment process. George declined, saying that's something only the people...
...marriage supporters are now trying to use the same amendment process that created the fix they are in to restore gay marriage. "The tools are what the tools are, and until the process is fixed we don't have any choice," Jacobs says. "We have no choice other than to use the system that is in place...