Guest blogged by Jon Ponder, Pensito Review.
The California Supreme court announced Wednesday that it will hear arguments challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the anti-gay amendment that overturned the right of gay people to marry in the state.
In May, the same court, which is composed of seven Republicans and one Democrat --- who are all elected for 12-year terms --- decided 4-3 to strike down a law banning same-sex marriage.
The judges are being asked now to decide whether the constitution can be amended to make discrimination against a minority group legal, a move that directly violates the constitution's "equal protection clause," a foundational principle that instructs government to guarantee that all citizens enjoy the same rights --- or whether a change to the equal protection clause should have been made through the constitutional "revision" process, which would have required a two-thirds vote by both houses of the legislature before going before the electorate as a ballot initiative.
In a recent San Francisco Chronicle op-ed, Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmeic, who served as a high official in the Reagan and Bush I Justice departments but who supported Barack Obama this year, laid out a compromise to the constitutional debacle brought on by the passage of Proposition 8 that puts the solution in the hands of California's governor: