As was widely expected, the California Supreme Court has voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages performed at the instigation of the San Francisco mayor earlier this year. The reason, according to the Court, is that the mayor overstepped his authority.

MSNBC explains:

The court did not resolve whether the California Constitution would permit a same-sex marriage, ruling instead on the narrow issue of whether local officials could bypass state judicial and legislative branches. Chief Justice Ronald George noted that Thursday’s ruling did not address “the substantive legal rights of same sex couples. In actuality, the legal issue before us implicates the interest of all individuals in ensuring that public officials execute their official duties in a manner that respects the limits of the authorities granted to them as officeholders.”

The decision itself reads:

In the present case, this legal issue arises out of the refusal of local officials in the City and County of San Francisco to enforce the provisions of California's marriage statutes that limit the granting of a marriage license and marriage certificate only to a couple comprised of a man and a woman. The same legal issue and the same applicable legal principles could come into play, however, in a multitude of situations. For example, we would face the same legal issue if the statute in question were among those that restrict the possession or require the registration of assault weapons, and a local official, charged with the ministerial duty of enforcing those statutes, refused to apply their provisions because of the official's view that they violate the Second Amendment of the federal Constitution. In like manner, the same legal issue would be presented if the statute were one of the environmental measures that impose restrictions upon a property owner's ability to obtain a building permit for a development that interferes with the public's access to the California coastline, and a local official, charged with the ministerial duty of issuing building permits, refused to apply the statutory limitations because of his or her belief that they effect an uncompensated "taking" of property in violation of the just compensation clause of the state or federal Constitution.

As these various examples demonstrate, although the present proceeding may be viewed by some as presenting primarily a question of the substantive legal rights of same-sex couples, in actuality the legal issue before us implicates the interest of all individuals in ensuring that public officials execute their official duties in a manner that respects the limits of the authority granted to them as officeholders. In short, the legal question at issue — the scope of the authority entrusted to our public officials — involves the determination of a fundamental question that lies at the heart of our political system: the role of the rule of law in a society that justly prides itself on being "a government of laws, and not of men" (or women).

The Court has a very valid and important point: we don’t want public servants to start acting randomly or according to their whims. They need to follow the law, even when they disagree with the law, because no public servant is above the law. There is, however, one problem: what happens when a public servant believes that the law is unconstitutional?

Believing that a law is unconstitutional is more than simply disagreeing with it. Is a public servant’s first duty to obey the law, or obey the Constitution? The latter, I think — so even in the examples that are listed above, it is arguable that the government officials are not necessarily acting incorrectly if they refuse to enforce a law they honestly believe is unconstitutional (unless courts have already ruled that it is).

Thus, while the courts may have been correct to put a halt to the marriages until a ruling could be made on them, it may not have been correct to nullify those already performed — at least, not yet.

Read More:

• Gay Rights, Gay Marriage
• Evangelical Christianity & Homosexuality
• Catholicism & Homosexuality