Mark Leno's Gender Neutral Marriage Bill

by Be_Devine [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

It is widely expected that Schwarzenegger will again veto Mark Leno's Gender Neutral Marriage Bill.  And if he does, he will claim that the bill violates the homophobic "will of the people," as expressed in the 2000 Proposition 22. 

Leno's intellectual response on the flip.

Mark Leno responded to this argument in an article in the SF Chronicle.  He said:

Civil rights for any group should never be put to a vote of the people. This is how we prevent the tyranny of the majority over the minority.

 Looking back through history:

In 1964, voters overwhelmingly overturned the state's Rumford Fair Housing Act, which banned racial discrimination in home sales and apartment rentals. In 1959, when the Legislature voted to allow interracial marriage in California, Leno said, it came in the face of a nationwide 1958 Gallup Poll that showed better than 90 percent of white voters were opposed to allowing blacks and whites to marry.

If only we had a Governor who was sophisticated enough to know that you don't put civil rights to a popular vote.  Leno for Governor 2010!