California moves to dump Proposition 8 from constitution

Eric Burkett

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — Almost three months after vowing to do so, California state Senator Scott Wiener introduced a constitutional amendment Tuesday to repeal Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in 2008.

Along with Assemblymember Evan Low, a Democrat from San Jose, Wiener introduced Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, which seeks to protect same-sex marriage and remove Proposition 8’s discriminatory language from the California Constitution.

“Prop 8 was a hateful attack on LGBTQ people & remains a scar on our constitution,” Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, said on Twitter early Tuesday. “Given the Supreme Court’s direction, it’s time.”

California voters passed Proposition 8 by a margin of 52% to 48%, a difference of about 600,000 votes, only a few months after the California Supreme Court ruled the state’s earlier prohibition on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

Activists for LGBT rights in the state worry that, should the U.S. Supreme Court overturn its decision on same-sex marriage, the presence of Proposition 8’s language in the state constitution would make it state law again.

This past November, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan Respect for Marriage Act repealing the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage while requiring the federal government to only recognize marriage between a man and a woman.

Wiener vowed then to go after Proposition 8, telling the San Francisco Chronicle, “We need to get this scar out of our constitution and move forward. We have to do our work at the state level. That’s on us.”