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Today's 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that California's Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, is unconstitutional "all but ensures" (according to The New York Times) that the case will go the Supreme Court, meaning it's leaving California and going national. All California judicial authority has said no to this thing, so now it's getting kicked upstairs to management. Which means at least one thing: We can finally forgive California.
Oh wasn't it so hard being mad at California for the past four years? Sure we'd been mad at them before — for Reagan, for Audrina Patridge — but the 2008 Prop 8 vote was what sullied an otherwise exciting election, with Barack Obama beating that creepy old Scooby Doo villain and everything gleaming with hope. There were all the coastal liberals, all happy and streaming into the streets, and then the Prop 8 results came in and the victory suddenly tasted a little sour. And it was all California's fault! The supposed hippie mecca, supposed bastion of Left Coast progressivism, joined the ranks of Tennessee and Mississippi. It was dispiriting, but it was also confusing.
Meaning, no longer could we make broad, sweeping generalizations about California being a coastal, liberal place. Well, it's still coastal, obviously, until the Big One comes and the whole state sinks into the sea, but could we just conveniently lump it in with the liberal enclaves like Taxachusetts anymore? No, we could not. Every time we tried, someone would say "Uh, hello, remember Prop 8??" and our poorly thought-out political rant over dinner would be ruined, our armchair punditry became suddenly difficult, our social vocabulary lost a few handy labels. Damn you Prop 8, and curse you California for letting it happen. How were we to make uninformed political predictions when you so callously acted against type like that?