[Karunamon]

Which is a longer and more arduous process to fix. In the mean time, you've got a constitutional issue that must be addressed now.

California had a few options here.

* Redefine all "marriages" as "civil unions". Makes the religious folks and libertarians happy, but introduces a problem in that you've deleted something that every other state recognizes. How will marriages in other states carry over? How about contracts that recognize a marriage (out of state insurance comes to mind)? Etc? Those would all be invalid. You've also ensured that any union in California (ANYONE's, not just LGBT's) would be invalid in any other state because they're legally not marriages anymore.

I say this solution introduces what would be known in the packaging world as dependency hell. Too many other things rely on the first thing to exist in its current state. You've introduced a change that is going to break a lot of things without dealing with them first.

Bad idea all around.

* Amend the legal definition of marriage to include any two people. Simplest thing that could possibly work, ensures that marriages performed in the state will be recognized elsewhere and for other purposes. No dependency issues. Annoys the religious folks a bit, but religious views have no say in law anyways!

[hackinthebochs]

This is a rational argument, and this is the argument people should be having with those who oppose it rather than name calling and mudslinging. But nothing that you say here justifies calling those who oppose this bigots, etc. Either way, the California legislature is probably the wrong place to have this discussion, as a marriage in California wouldn't necessarily be recognized in other states anyways.

[Karunamon]

I think that was part of the goal of redefining marriage legally. Which is pretty damn brilliant once you think about it.

The full faith and credit clause ensures that contracts (which is what a marriage technically is) are valid in all other states in the union. This completely sidesteps any local laws that might be otherwise inferior, and also ensures that the case can be easily escalated (all the way to SCOTUS if necessary) in case of issues.