“The real poll was that the people of California passed Prop 8.”
Actually, the real poll was the 2010 California Gubernatorial election. Jerry Brown, while Attorney General, chose not to defend Prop 8 in court. Californians enthusiastically supported that decision by electing him governor by a landslide — by a much larger margin than had approved Prop 8 in the first place. (Maybe they changed their minds?) Interestingly, Brown’s 2010 Republican opponent, Meg Whitman, now supports same sex marriage, too.
“The DOMA case was about a federal law that defines marriage for all federal purposes as being between one man and one woman. The Court held this unconstitutional as a deprivation of the rights of those who want to marry someone of the same gender. This was a substantive ruling.”
This is one that split Movement Conservatives. On the one hand, they hate gays (or at least they feel they have to pretend that they do; I don’t think their heart is in this one). On the other hand, they also hate the Estate Tax and the plaintiff was a woman who was trying to get a refund of over $300,000 she had paid in Estate Tax.