The California Supreme Court last week decided that the laws making same-sex marriages illegal violate the civil rights laws. I don't have to tell you how significant this. California, by far, is the country's largest state. You could say that, as California goes, so goes the nation. That's not true in this instance, though. Most of the state courts that have ruled on the legality of anti-same sex marriage laws have upheld the prohibition.

I don't say this out of arrogance, but the general public knows very little about how the courts work in this country. For some people, the criminal justice system is summed up by the O.J. Simpson case, where a jury set free a guy who in all likelihood had something to do with the brutal stabbings of his wife and her friend. And the civil justice system is summed up by the McDonald's hot coffee case, where a woman got a large jury award after scalding herself with hot coffee. Of course, these cases are not representative of the legal system. Neither is the same-sex marriage case from California. It's worth taking a look at what the court actually did, brushing aside the hateful and ignorant comments about the consequences of this ground-breaking ruling.

Here is what the court did. The Supreme Court has interpreted the U.S. Constitution as protecting the fundamental right to marry, raise children and procreate. This language is not in the Constitution, but the Court decided many years ago that any civilized society would recognize these rights as fundamental. Most state courts have interpreted their own constitutions the same way. These rights are not absolute, however. You have the right to marry, but you can't marry your sister or have multiple wives. That's because, while the right to marry is fundamental, the government does have some control over this issue. But the government cannot prevent you from marrying someone else without a compelling reason. There are compelling reasons to prevent people from marrying children, their sisters, or more than one person. The question in the California case (and in all cases involving same-sex marriage) is whether the government can identify any compelling reason why two consenting adult men (or women) cannot marry each other if they are not married to anyone else.

The short answer to this question is that there is no compelling reason to prevent same-sex marriages. It is not a compelling reason that society has frowned upon these unions in the past. It is also not a compelling reason that some people have religious or moral objections to same-sex marriages. Were that the case, the Supreme Court would have upheld laws making it illegal for people of different races to marry. Instead, in 1967, the Supreme Court struck down those laws despite claims these laws were necessary to ensure the purity of the races.

As the California court said, "tradition alone . . . generally has not been viewed as a sufficient justification for perpetuating, without examination the restriction or denial of a fundamental constitutional right."

Over the last decade or so, other state courts have found ways to continue the prohibition against same-sex marriages. They did this by playing games with or outright misinterpreting the language in prior Supreme Court rulings on the right to marry, or side-stepping the issue by holding that elected officials in the state legislatures are the proper avenues for making same-sex marriage legal. These courts had no guts, and they should be ashamed of themselves. The California Supreme Court did the right thing, consequences be damned.

There will be consequences. Anti-gay-marriage organizations in California are trying to get a measure on the ballot this November so that voters can reject same-sex marriage and overturn the court ruling. They only way this measure can pass is through intensive lobbying by "pro-family" groups who hate gay marriage and do not want society to recognize this lifestyle. That means that gays and lesbians will be demonized through television and other advertisements, and candidates who support same-sex marriages or do not condemn them strongly enough will be deemed radicals in favor of the "homosexual agenda." It will not be pretty to see this issue dragged into the political process.