California Passes Gay Marriage Ban, Legal Challenges to Come

Nov. 5, 2008 — -- The voters have spoken, not only electing a new president, but rejecting abortion restrictions in some states that could have forced the Supreme Court to re-examine Roe vs. Wade, and banning a law allowing gay marriage in California.

On Wednesday, gay marriage advocates filed a legal challenge in California's state Supreme Court to the initiative known as Proposition 8.

Prop 8 will overturn the state Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that legalized gay marriage. The legal challenge brought today was filed on behalf of an advocacy group called Equality California and six same-sex couples who did not marry before Tuesday's election, but would like to marry now.

Whether named a ballot measure, ballot initiative, proposition or referendum, the collective legislation put state or local policy decisions in the hands of pencil-wielding or touch-screen-pushing voters. More than 150 social issues made it onto ballots in 35 states this Election Day.

Gay marriage is the big issue in California. With passage of Proposition 8, California amends its constitution to specify that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized.

Earlier this year the state's Supreme Court overturned a 2000 gay marriage initiative. That decision allowed thousands of gays and lesbians to be legally married in that state; gay couples across the state decided not to take their chances, choosing to marry before voters took up the measure.

Other states that had gay marriage on the ballot included Arizona and Florida. Voters in both states passed measures to amend their constitutions to specify that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage.

The Florida measure needed to reach 60 percent to pass; voters pushed it just past the threshold to 62 percent, according to preliminary vote totals on the Florida Secretary of State's Web site.

Gay marriage also loomed as an issue in Connecticut, which just saw its civil union law overturned earlier this month, paving the way for same-sex marriages to begin in that state before the end of the year.