The initiative is unlikely to pass statewide, and John McCain is unlikely to carry California even with the initiative on the ballot, but there are down-ticket social conservative candidates in Coalinga and Visalia who will benefit from the presence of this initiative.

Newsweek: Soldiers Turning To Self-Harm To Avoid Going Back To Iraq

Army suicides rose last year, Pentagon says
115 troops killed themselves in 2007, the most since at least 1980

also, @5, although mobilizing voters for John McCain might be a result of this initiative, it was not an intended one. The initiative backers tried to get the initiative up on the recent June 3rd ballot, thinking that it would benefit from low turnout, which usually favors Republicans. They didn't gather enough signatures though, so had to wait for the upcoming November election.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Not to mention Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, etc . . .

May I introduce a proposition with enough signatures on it that proposes, "No Jew may use the library on Thursday?"

Or how about, "Native Americans may not purchase alcohol outside their reservations?"

Does the 14th protect shit like that, too?

The only alternative the court had to allowing same-sex marriage would be to have struck down the equal protection law as unconstitutionally vague. In the end, if any state says people have equal rights and equal protection under the law regardless of sexual orientation, they are compelled to define what sexual orientation is.

Sexual orientation implies that there is some chunk of the spectrum of gender on which lies the sort of person you are attracted to, fall in love with, and want to be married to. Even using the term "sexual orientation" itself implies the tacit assumption that hetero and homo are simply different "orientations" people have. If you have equal rights "regardless of sexual orientation" then you really do have to treat hetero and homo marriages the same.

Perhaps the constitutional amendment crowd would do better to petition the legislature to re-word the equal protection law. If "what they really meant was" whatever one might do in the bedroom, equal rights and protections apply to an individual, then such a clarification of the law would nullify the court decision.