A few months ago, the California Supreme Court overruled the will of the California voters and announced that gay marriage was a fundamental right.  The voters responded by changing the California Constitution to state that, in California, marriage is between one man and one woman.  As you know, if it were up to me, I’d get the state out of the “marriage” business altogether, leaving it to religions, and limiting the state to civil unions.  Second best to that, though, is that marriage remain what it has been in Western culture for thousands of years:  a male/female thing.

What do you bet, though, that the California Supreme Court, smarting from the rebuff that the voters issued, will once again sweep aside the people’s will and announce that gay marriage is so fundamental a right that it cannot even be addressed through constitutional amendment:

California’s highest court has agreed to hear legal challenges to a new ban on gay marriage, but is refusing to allow gay couples to resume marrying until it rules.The California Supreme Court on Wednesday accepted three lawsuits seeking to overturn Proposition 8. The amendment passed this month with 52 percent of the vote. The court did not elaborate on its decision.

All three cases claim the ban abridges the civil rights of a vulnerable minority group. They argue that voters alone did not have the authority to enact such a significant constitutional change.

UPDATE: At Power Line, there’s a feeling that the anti-Prop. 8 party’s briefs are so awful that they don’t give the California Supreme Court a legal leg to stand on when it comes to declaring unconstitutional the California constitution.

Back in 1989, Bay Area locals were stunned to learn of a horrific massacre up in Sonoma County:

[Ramon] Salcido, now 47, used a gun and knife to murder his wife, Angela Richards Salcido, 24; their daughters, 4-year-old Sofia and 22-month-old Teresa; his mother-in-law, Marion Richards, 47; her daughters, 12-year-old Ruth and 8-year-old Maria; and Tracey Toovey, 35, his supervisor at Grand Cru Winery in Glen Ellen.

He was also convicted of attempting to murder his 2-year-old daughter, Carmina, who survived a slashed throat, and another winery worker, Kenneth Butti, who was shot in the shoulder.

After these heinous murders, Salcido escaped to Mexico, where he was caught and returned to California for trial.  The jury convicted him and recommended the death penalty.  He’s been appealing ever since, a process that just resulted in an opinion from the California Supreme Court.

Almost surprisingly, given that it is a California Court, the judges ruled that the death penalty was valid.  They batted down his arguments about mental illness and information withheld from the jury, and all sorts of other stuff.

The argument that intrigued me was Salcido’s claim that, as a Mexican citizen, he could not be extradited from Mexico (which has no death penalty) to America.  This is a familiar argument, as we’ve seen it play out before, with Mexico refusing to turn suspected killers over to the US authorities.  This time, though, there was a twist.  In reading the following, you have to appreciate the unspoken concept behind all this, which is that Salcido was here in America, and committed all those horrible acts, as an illegal alien:

In his appeal, Salcido’s lawyer contended his client, who was a Mexican citizen, had been transferred to the United States in violation of a treaty that allows the Mexican government to block the extradition of one of its citizens unless U.S. authorities promise not to impose the death penalty, which does not exist in Mexico.

Salcido’s lawyer contended agents from Sonoma County and the federal government had induced Mexican officials to transfer Salcido by identifying him as a U.S. citizen.

But the court said law enforcement officials from both countries had believed Salcido was a U.S. citizen based on his own statements and on Salcido’s residence in California, where he had a Social Security card and a driver’s license.

In other words, the Supreme Court said that, if you’re going to go around pretending to be an American citizen, you can’t complain if you are then treated as one to your detriment.  In any event, the Court added, only the Mexican government gets to complain if one of its citizens is wrongfully taken from its borders.  Given Salcido’s appalling conduct, Mexico may feel that this is one citizenship error better left unremedied.

Dennis Prager has a good column discussing what will be, in his view, the ramifications of the California Supreme Court decision creating a new right out of thin air.  One of the points he makes is that, in the future, to avoid charges of discrimination, homosexual relationships will have to be promoted equally with heterosexual relationships.  Schools that once had books about boys and girls meeting and starting a family, will now have to have an equal number of books for little kids showing same sex couples meeting and starting families.  That thinking will have to permeate every reference to marriage and relationships, and this trend will appear in every aspect of life.

While Prager doesn’t say it in his article, on his show yesterday, he mentioned that this inevitable trend (which will be legally mandated on discrimination grounds) will create a rather unexpected fall-out, one that I’d already figured out on my own:  parents who have previously encouraged their children not to be discriminatory against gays will, when faced with a society that is required to promote homosexuality equally with hetereosexuality, begin preaching against homosexual behavior in the home.

Many of these parents will be like me:  They will recognize that a small percentage of people are homosexual out of the box.  However, they will also know that, as in ancient Greece where popular culture encouraged homosexual relationships for pleasure and heterosexual relationships solely for procreation, people in the great middle can have their sexuality manipulated.

Lastly, these parents will know that, while there are gays and lesbians live the same stolid (and solid) middle class life that I do (which is what I want for my children), a large number — especially men — enjoy the promiscuity that comes from (a) no worries about pregnancy and (b) dealing with sexual partners who match them testosterone for testosterone.  Sadly, the evidence shows that, with this type of promiscuity, you also get rampant diseases and statistically increased substance abuse and domestic violence.

I actually don’t need studies to know about these problems.  I grew up in the SF Bay Area and, until I switched from urban life to suburban domesticity, had many gay friends — and these were people whom I valued greatly and whose friendships I cherished.  Nevertheless, even then I saw them going down a life trajectory antithetical to what I hoped for myself — one of unbridled, although often classy and beautiful, hedonism.  And so many of them died of AIDS.  It wasn’t AIDS they got at the dentist or from a blood transfusion or from one unlucky coupling.  It was AIDS they got at the orgies they used to boast about attending.  Only two men I know who were monogamous got AIDS and, in both cases, it was because their partners were incredibly promiscuous — something my friends knew about and tolerated.

Without passing any judgment on homosexuality itself, this is not the lifestyle I want for my children.  Therefore, if the state is promoting homosexuality because it is required to do so, it’s my responsibility as a parent to push back, not because I don’t like gays, but because I fear the consequences of a lifestyle that has too many negative consequences for my children.