Reply #43: Those are all standards applied to ordinary laws, though. [View All]

[Unvanguard]

Not constitutional amendments.

The issue for an amendment is not whether it would be ruled unconstitutional if it were an ordinary law (as Prop. 8 would), but whether it is a revision, which implies a more radical change to the way the California government does things.

The "slippery slope" argument you (and the people challenging this in court) present is a very good one--the slope is very genuinely slippery--but the trouble is that it is not particularly relevant to Prop. 8. It is really an objection not to Prop. 8 (which is narrow in its scope and has nothing to do with the marriage rights of illegal immigrants) but to California's absurdly easy amendment process, which is general and does indeed allow for the sorts of abuses of civil liberties to which you refer.

But the courts certainly cannot overturn that. You would need a revision of the Constitution to change it, not a court decision.

Edit: I'm not an attorney either, nor a legal expert in any professional sense, but I know a little about equal protection cases on the federal level, and I've read a great deal about Prop. 8 and the surrounding legalities before and after its passage.