For those of us who believe in the preservation of traditional (male-female) marriage, there is good news from the left coast. The California Court of Appeals rejected same-sex marriage in a 2 to 1 decision this past Friday October 6, 2006. That is good news for the voters in California who passed prop 22 in 2000 which defined marriage as being between one man and one woman. This ruling represents a victory of rule of law and traditional marriage.
The majority’s opinion stated that the same-sex couples in these appeals were asking the Court of Appeals to “recognize a new right,” but that courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, “especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution” as marriage. “In the final analysis,” the judges stated, “the court is not in the business of defining marriage.”
The majority opinion also declared that the lower trial court’s decision “essentially redefined marriage to encompass unions that have never before been considered as such in this state.” The appellate court’s decision went on to state that it is “beyond the judiciary’s realm of authority to redefine a statute or to confer a new right where none previously existed.”