I do agree that marriage should be between a man and a woman myself but I do think they should have civil unions to give them the same rights as married couples. 

If people are against same sex marriage because of religion that is one thing.  But civil unions not being recognized in California, of all places, is just so surprising to me.  Hopefully, the next time it is on the ballot it will pass.

Marriage is just a word and giving gay couples "civil unions" but giving them the same rights is just calling it by a different name!

This ruling is a just a temporary roadblock on a fight that will eventually be lost by the gay rights opponents. I think its about time everyone get out of others’ bedrooms and focus on their own lives and their marriages and their families and leave everyone else to their own happiness. I’m not gay/lesbian, but even I’m sick of people sticking their moral objections in other people’s lives when most can’t even handle their own lives.

Unfortunately, the majority of the people of California voted for Prop 8, so I’m not sure the Court had a choice.  I live in Wisconsin, and our state Constitution has also been changed.  I will never understand that position.  How does allowing same sex marriage in any way diminish the sanctity of the institution for opposite sex couples?  The only thing I can think of is the religious factor, which should have no bearing on the outcome of the law.

For those interested, here is the site from which the text of the ruling can be downloaded: [ http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/ ].

So far it has been an astonishingly good year for civil rights.  Since both the Republican Governor and the Democratic Attorney General oppose Proposition 8, perhaps the California state government will find a way to implement the constitutional revision and still preserve equal treatment under the law.  Once we have been able to read the fine print, we might find that the Supreme Court itself has suggested how this might be done.

From what I have read of the opinion thus far, the court seems to have been obliged to have ruled as it has regarding the constitutional “revision” vs. “amendment” question.
The ruling goes on to say …

Contrary to petitioners’ assertion, Proposition 8 does not entirely repeal or abrogate the aspect of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right of privacy and due process that was analyzed in the majority opinion in the Marriage Cases - that is, the constitutional right of same-sex couples to “choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized, and protected family relationship that enjoys all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage” (Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal.4th at p. 829).  Nor does Proposition 8 fundamentally alter the meaning and substance of state constitutional equal protection principles as articulated in that opinion.  Instead, the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the official designation of the term “marriage” for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law, but leaving undisturbed all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection of the laws.

The campaign for this proposition suggests that the term “marriage” is the exclusive domain of religious institutions.  If that is so, then the government should not be in the “marriage” business (as such).
Every (so-called) “marriage” is an instance of a personal contract between domestic partners.  The state could recognize every such civil union / domestic partnership personal contract without resorting to the use of the word “marriage”, thus sidestepping religious disputes.

No civil union / domestic partnership contract arranged for through the government EVER amounts to a religious assertion regarding “marriage” by the government.  If all couples (straight and gay alike) get from the government the same piece of paper - a “Civil Union / Domestic Partnership” license, there are no religious ramifications.  Every couple then can go to the church of their choice to have their unions sanctified by the church (and then deemed to be “marriage” according to the preferences of the churches and of the couples).
The churches are free to bless and approve whichever unions they choose and everyone gets the same piece of paper and the same legal rights and responsibilities from the government.  The government only handles civil business and the church only handles religious business.
With such an arrangement, the rights of churches are protected and, presumably, everyone could finally be happy.

We’ll see.  At any rate, the approach described here appears to be in harmony with what the court stated today in the case of Strauss v. Horton:

We emphasize only that among the various constitutional protections recognized in the Marriage Cases as available to same-sex couples, it is only the designation of marriage - albeit significant - that has been removed by this initiative measure.

To restate this … as best as I can make out from the opinion, if a same-sex couple fails to receive from the state of California a domestic-union contract (sans the term “marriage”) with precisely the same terms, rights and legal obligations as the contract provided to opposing-sex couples, then the former may have a cause of action of precisely the same kind which they won on in the matter of Marriage Cases.

Very sad indeed :-(  Two steps forward, eight steps back….

Once again the late great state of CA shows its bigoted mentality for the world to laugh at.  They voted in Prop 8 like they voted in Pro 13 which in itself is breaking the state economically.  Republican mismanagement also has had a great deal to do with its downfall.  A sad fate for a once great state.

No, I do not think that the CA Supreme Court made the right decision.  If one part of the Consitution says equal rights for all, and another new amendment says that a subset of people should not have the rights of another subset, that sounds like a revision to me.  Revisions shouldn’t happen via simply majority…..  (Though the fact that any part of the Constitution can be changed by simply majority seems completely absurd to me.)