I must admit: I did NOT see this coming

[I]n contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation - like a person's race or gender - does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights. We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution
properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.

-- The final paragraph of the California Supreme Court ruling overturning the state's ban on same-sex marriage. Read more at SFGate: "State Supreme Court Says Same-Sex Couples Have the Right to Marry"

In related news, you know that Gavin Newsom is busy running in circles around his office, crowing, "Gavin FTW! Gavin FTW!"

Comments

[mindy]

Welcome to the club! Love, Massachusetts.

[Jessica]

Woooooo!!!!!!

[Shotrock]

I'm not surprised (well, okay, I work in the legal field, so I'm a bit inside baseball, admittedly). As Glenn Greenwald so succinctly explained in Salon:

The Court did not rule that California must allow same-sex couples the right to enter into "marriage." It merely ruled that if the state allows opposite-sex couples to do so, then same-sex couples must be treated equally. The Court explicitly left open the possibility that the state could distinguish between "marriage" (as a religious institution) and "civil unions" (as a secular institution) -- i.e., that California law could leave the definition of "marriage" to religious institutions and only offer and recognize "civil unions" for legal purposes -- provides that it treated opposite-sex and same-sex couples equally. The key legal issue is equal treatment by the State as a secular matter, not defining "marriage" for religious purposes.

Emphasis mine. What is going to inevitably happen nationwide is that the sort of church/state separation recognized by the Constitution in other areas (education, employment, etc.) will also be recognized in this area. Note that the decision did not use the term marriage OR civil union, but "loving long-term committed relationships." We will all, straights and gays, enter into a contractually-bound state-recognized "long-term committed relationship" through a civil license, which will function as today's marriage license does in the USA and as civil marriage does in countries of the EU. Then, we'll take that document and go to the house of worship of our choice for a religious marriage, should we so desire.

It's the only thing that's workable for this situation as we're probably going to live it, where states will come on board one by one for years before SCOTUS steps in (like what happened with interracial marriage). When that happens, the trailing states will be able to (read: forced to) implement universal civil licenses, and the on-board states -- whether they are GM states like MA or GCU states like NJ -- will be able to easily flip their systems to universal civil licenses.

In other news, as a die-hard Jersey Girl I'm ashamed to say that I'm gleeful to have a comeback to all the trash-talk from certain Californians about how the Golden State is always AheadoftheCurveblahblahMcTrendsettingcakes.