Pass legislation? Nah, let's just sue!

In all this debate about prop 8 in California, there's an important argument that's being missed, perhaps deliberately.

The framers of the Constitution, in one of many moments of brilliance, decided to leave much of the day-to-day business of making laws to the States. What's great about that is you get 50 individual experiments... 50 little petri dishes in which various solutions to the little problems that plague us all get attacked from 50 different directions until, ultimately, an optimal solution is found, and adopted at the federal level.

At least, that's the way it's supposed to happen.

The problem is that our legislators, both local and federal, have become pussies. See, the problem with being a legislator, is that every thing you do leaves a record on which you must eventually stand or fall. And lately, those legislators have been only too happy to avoid having to make potentially unpopular decisions by letting the major issues of the day be decided by a handful of judges.

The problem with that is, well it's simply not the function the courts were meant to perform. Laws are meant to be debated, crafted, and proposed by legislatures, not determined by 3 or 5 judges in a moment of judicial fiat... the courts are only supposed to get involved with the most egregious unresolved issues that the people, and their duly elected representatives, somehow allow to slip through the cracks.

Now along comes gay marriage, which was banned by the people of California by a 23% margin just a few shorts years ago, while a second ban just barely passed by a few percentage points only last week. The message is that there is a generational shift happening here that would make a bill legalizing the practice increasingly popular in a California that is set to see it's oldest and most rigid citizens begin to shuffle off this mortal coil over the next decade. Isn't there one courageous legislator in town willing to bet that shift happens sooner rather than later?

Now our governor has said he hopes the California Supreme Court overturns this latest ban... but to that I say, you are a girlie-man, Mr. Governor. I mean, if you feel that strongly about it, how about you propose a law? Get together with one or more state senators and pass something, for crissakes. Do your job!

But he won't, and you know why? Because supreme court judges are not elected, they don't have to worry that a challenger is going to stand across from them in a debate and demand that they explain to the people of the State why they voted this way or that way. So it's much easier for a legislator or cheif executive to sit back and let the courts decide than to get their hands dirty with a law that someone might hold them accountable for. Oh and by the way, Ah-nult has vetoed legislation to legalize marriage at least twice before... so it's a little disengenuous to claim that he hopes the courts will overturn the ban now, isn't it, when he could have legalized it, himself, years ago simply by signing a bill!?

At the very least, it doesn't make him look particularly courageous.

Anyway, the point is that we've come to a place in our society where we have allowed our legislators to abdicate their responsibility to enact legislation that reflects the desires of their constituencies, and allowed them to tranfer that responsiblity to the courts... and the problem wth that, is that judges are not accountable to the voters.

I'm not so sure this is a positive evolution in the annals of representative democracy.

What say you?