Given what I've read from the opinion so far, if California's majority voters want to allow only man woman marriages then it is up to them to flex their voting muscle to amend their constitution to say so, the judges be damned.
The bottom line is that Californians can choose not to be slaves to their own constitution or the judges who interpret it.
Naturally no one has read the entire opinion yet, at least not well enough to digest the whole thing. Clearly the judges are hedging their opinions and I think it will be narrower than first appearance, however it is a setback for traditional marriage advocates.
As I look at this strategy, I think the mistake California and other states are making is setting up a parallel legal relationship for gays, in California recognized “civil unions”. It appears to have been, as many warned, a camel’s nose under the tent strategy. Once ensconced as legally accepted, the gay rights organizations argued that there was no reason for a parallel relationship and attacked it as unconstitutional. The court looked at the constitution, said “by golly” and held that a two-tiered legal recognition of personal relationships wasn’t addressed by the Constitution and seems to violate the Equal Protection Clause which most, if not all, states have in their constitutions.
The way to attack this is to amend the Constitution and have it survive a legal attack by proving that marriage between a man and woman benefits the community in a different way than the homosexual relationship. That argument can be made but it would take years. In the meantime, look for a stampede of laws in the Assembly to forestall such a tactic.
One of the worse mistakes Conservatives make is underestimating the long-term strategy (and the evil intent) of their adversaries. I’m beginning to think that Conservatives needs to think long and hard about stopping the internecine sniping with each other and banding together in private political action committees to work on long-term agendas. California is almost totally dominated by liberals so there is little to be done in the short-term. In the longer term, we can work to get true Conservatives into the halls of power in spite of the fact that they might not be a clone of ourselves.
Moving to the national arena, I am very disappointed in McCain but I truly fear the repercussions to the nation if a Democrat is elected president. I think November is lost whichever way we go but I think it is time for Conservatives to flex their muscles by pulling money out of the Republican Party and putting it into strong PACs to make the Republican Party do their bidding, just as MoveOn and Soros’ Open Society have used concentrated funds to call the tune for the Democrat Party. We are a people who distrust large organizations but that is all we have to combat the liberal organizations who are now calling the shots for both parties.