Win some. Lose some.

But put me on record saying it's wrong to play politics with people's lives. No matter how legal or popular those tactics are amongst those in authority today.

Strikes me as correct...

Justice Kennard suggested that the substantive rights of gays were the same after the proposition, and all that had changed was “the label of marriage.”

That distinction was deeply dissatisfying to Mr. Minter, representing the plaintiffs, who argued that without the right to the word “marriage,” same-sex couples would find “our outsider status enshrined in our Constitution.”

Chief Justice George’s opinion dealt directly with that point, stating that the court understood the importance of the word marriage and was not trying to diminish it. However, he wrote, the legal right of people to call themselves married is only one of the rights granted to same-sex couples in the decision last May, and so “it is only the designation of marriage -- albeit significant--that has been removed by this initiative measure.”

Karl Manheim, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, called the decision a “safe” position written by justices who can be recalled by voters. The change wrought by Proposition 8 was anything but narrow, he said, and claiming that the word marriage was essentially symbolic was like telling black people that sitting in the back of the bus was not important as long as the front and back of the bus arrive at the same time.