Will the Courts Disenfranchise California Voters?

As I noted yesterday , over 70 percent of African Americans voted yes on Proposition 8, the California ballot initiative defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The measure passed 52-48. Now, predictably, gay-rights advocates have filed a legal challenge in California’s Supreme Court, arguing that Proposition 8 is an illegal revision of the Constitution.

If successful this legal challenge will not only overturn the will of the people who have radical and unacceptable ideas about marriage being between a man and a woman, but it will effectively disenfranchise the views of America’s most oppressed minority group on the issue. The courts know much better than African Americans and on these issues they are simply are not to be trusted.

Perhaps at President Obama’s first press conference, a reporter might ask a question along these lines:

President Obama, you have often proclaimed your opposition to same-sex marriage. African Americans in California seem to agree with you. Some doubted the sincerity of your convictions on this issue, in part because you refused to endorse California’s Proposition 8, the ballot initiative that simply legally defined marriage as between a man and a woman. The initiative passed anyway, and African Americans supported the initiative with over 70 percent voting for the initiative. They did so overwhelmingly—in far greater percentages than whites, Asian Americans, or Hispanics.

There is now a legal challenge to that ballot initiative. Do you believe the will of these African Americans as expressed in their votes should be respected or should they be overruled by the courts? If the courts overturned Proposition 8, wouldn’t this be a de facto disenfranchisement?

Can’t blame a guy for dreaming!