Obama won. It surely was amazing, yes.
On the flip side, the majority of the state of California voted to WRITE INTO THEIR CONSTITUTION A BAN AGAINST SAME-SEX MARRIAGE.
How can a constitution DENY RIGHTS?
So now, all the tens of thousands of couples who already entered into the marriage contract may be told, “Whoops! It turns out you’re actually NOT citizens! Your marriage is annulled! Sorry! But we can still be neighbors and friends and co-workers, right?”
What. The. Fuck.
You want to talk about change?
How about recognizing ALL citizens as having inalienable rights?
You should run for office.
No shit, yo.
But my platform is: we should ALL be the politicians, therefore making my role obsolete. You don’t vote for me to “represent” you, you vote for what you REALLY want to get passed. Not indirect. DIRECT.
Sadly, it’s that damn direct democracy that led Prop 8 to passage :-\
The court cases will be interesting; the best of which I think is the one that discusses whether or not Prop 8 represents an amendment (a gazillion signatures puts it on the ballot then we vote to amend by simple majority*) or a revision (requires 2/3 supermajority of both houses of the Assembly before going to ballot, which I think also is just a simple majority to pass). The argumentation — and I am not a lawyer — looks pretty good to me that this, while not stating as much, effectively represents a revision to the fundamentals of the constitution. We’ll see!
* – Note that for anything that raises an ad valorem taxes in CA, a 2/3 supermajority is required for whatever body is passing it including popular vote, and budgets require a 2/3 majority in both houses. But amendments we just let slide because who are they going to hurt??