Kate Kendell on Ken Starr During the Prop. 8 Oral Arguments

04/02/09 San Diego LGBT Community Center Town Hall Meeting:

Kate Kendell is the executive director of the National Center For Lesbian Rights, whose legal director, Shannon Price Minter, participated in the Prop. 8 oral arguments before the California Supreme Court. In this YouTube clip, Kendell talks about Pepperdine University School of Law dean Kenneth Starr, who presented the arguments of Prop. 8 opponents. Kendell considers the consequence of a "legal theory" that Starr asked the Court to accept as a reason to uphold Prop. 8. The legal theory is that popular sovereignity, exercised through the initiative, has no other check than the federal constitution on limiting the scope of fundamental rights. If the Court accepts this theory, it would effectively "emasculate" the California constitution by ceding to the Bill of Rights state constitutional protection of the fundamental rights of targeted minorities. That, claims Kendell, is a consequence the Court must reject.