Evan Gerstmann, chair of the political science department at LMU, was a guest on Sunday’s KNBC Channel 4 News Conference discussing the passage of Proposition 8 and the legal challenges it faces. Gerstmann, an expert on same-sex marriage and constitutional law has written extensively about gay civil rights and is the author of “The Constitutional Underclass: Gays, Lesbians, and the Failure of Class-Based Equal Protection.”
Interviewed by News Conference host Laurel Erickson, Gerstmann said even though the majority of people voted in favor of Proposition 8, its fate is still undecided because of a series of lawsuits filed after Election Day. One of those suits asks the court to throw out the measure because it is a revision of the constitution rather than a simple amendment.
“We are a constitutional democracy” Gerstmann told Erickson, “and if in fact the courts decide that the process was improper, that this was the incorrect way legally to revise the constitution, even the majority of people have to abide by that.”
In addition, Gerstman said that same-sex marriages performed since the California Supreme Court’s ruling in May could also face legal challenges.
Last month, material from Gerstmann’s book was cited five times in the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision that gave same-sex couples in Connecticut a constitutional right to marry.
