Unable to defend Prop. 8 on the merits, defendants argued that it is protected from constitutional challenge because it was passed by 52 percent of California voters. But if we were prepared to leave minority rights up to a majority vote, there would be no need for a constitution - and many state laws discriminating based on race, sex and religion would plague us all.

Defenders of Prop. 8 also sometimes suggest that it should be upheld because it returns California to the practice throughout the United States up until the last decade. But as Justice Anthony Kennedy elegantly wrote when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws prohibiting consensual homosexual conduct, history is no justification for continued discrimination and, "Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress."