California’s Supreme Court intrudes into a social issue that the state’s political process was handling well.

Yet the flawed court decision could trigger serious political backlash because the outcome was produced not by the state’s voters but by a 4 to 3 majority of judges.

The state’s elected representatives passed sweeping legislation in 1999 that gave same-sex couples near legal parity with their opposite-sex counterparts; that landmark legislation has been amended over the years to expand the rights of gay couples. Before the court ruling, same-sex couples in California had virtually the same — not separate, but the same — legal rights as heterosexual couples, insofar as state law can grant that. The only thing they lacked was the right to be called “married.”

Not surprisingly, those who oppose same-sex marriage in California are working to put a measure on the November ballot to override the decision. Depending on how it is worded, such a measure, if passed, could return California to the status quo that existed before the decision or go further and pare back the protections of the state’s domestic partnership law. This latter outcome would represent a truly sad turn of events.

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