Ding!
is that the sound you hear in your empty skull?
how do you explain all those legal gay marriages?
Of course gays had the right to get married. If not, there would be no need for this thread.
The court decided last year the right existed all along and had been illegally denied.
The opinion, written by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, cited the Court's 1948 decision in Perez v. Sharp where the state's interracial marriage ban was held unconstitutional.
It found that "equal respect and dignity" of marriage is a "basic civil right" that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples, that sexual orientation is a protected class like race and gender, and that any classification or discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause of the California State Constitution. Associate Justices