The dissenting opinion to Thursday's ruling was penned by Justice Marvin Baxter.
While he agreed with many arguments of the majority he said that any changes to the state marriage law should be decided by voters.
[...]
Schwarzenegger has previously vetoed bills that would have legalized gay marriage. Both times Schwarzenegger said that the courts or the people through a plebiscite should decide the issue.
I'm not an expert on how government works, but these two people, a California Supreme Court justice, and an actor-slash-governor, should both know a little something about how it works. If I'm not mistaken, we have three branches of government, just like the federal government does. One of them, the legislative branch, is responsible for making laws. We, the people of the state, are responsible for, among other things, electing the members of the legislative branch. The only reason for having the voters decide an issue directly is if the legislative branch is not responding to a pressing issue for some reason, and the citizens need to take things into their own hands. Now, it may be that the legislature is unwilling or unable to act on some issue, and in that case, it might be a good idea to have a ballot initiative. However, this is not that issue. The legislature has tried to make a decision, and, as it says in the article, Schwarzenegger vetoed their decision twice. I see no reason that this issue ought to be decided by the voters directly. Except perhaps that Schwarzenegger doesn't want to have a bunch of conservative anti-SSM people mad at him.
I'm not even looking at this from a gay rights point of view. I'm just saying, there are people in Sacramento whose job it is to make laws, and while there are other ways of doing that, I see no reason those other ways should be invoked now.
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