Editorial:

On Tuesday, 18,000 same-sex married couples in California, including dozens in Glendale and Burbank, found themselves in an awkward position. Their marriages, performed before voters approved Proposition 8 last year, would be upheld, but all other gays would have to settle for domestic partnerships.

The state Supreme Court attempted to reconcile this disparity by arguing that Proposition 8 “carves out a narrow and limited exception” to the Constitution, and so did require the two-thirds consent from the state Legislature to be placed on the ballot.

Gay couples still have similar protection under domestic partnership law, and so are not denied the right to “officially recognized and protected family relationships,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote in his majority opinion.

But later on, he defended the majority’s decision to uphold the previously performed same-sex marriages because ending them would be akin to “throwing property rights into disarray, destroying the legal interests and expectation of thousands of couples and their families, and potentially undermining the ability of citizens to plan their lives according to the law as it has been determined by the state’s highest court.”

Doesn’t sound like such a “narrow and limited” impact to us.

Even more troubling was the basic scope of the decision — that Proposition 8, and the process by which a narrow majority of voters can limit the rights of a minority group through California’s direct democracy system, was valid.

Nevermind that 18,000 married same-sex couples have been sent to a legal no man’s land. What’s scary is that voters could, if they really wanted, continue to amend the Constitution, as they did with Proposition 8, every year for the next five years, or 20.

That could put the group of 18,000 in more distinct or crowded company, depending on the whim of voters. Conservative groups could fund yet another petition drive to put more “narrow and limited” restrictions on gays to a statewide vote. At the same time, liberal groups could do the opposite in an attempt to overturn Proposition 8, and perhaps succeed.

Under each scenario, and the countless variations in between, California’s ballot system essentially provides the framework by which thousands of gay couples, friends, brothers, sisters and co-workers are pushed and shoved around a legal Ouija board according to the whims of changing political and social sentiments.

It’s not fair that they should have to spend years together waiting for voters to reopen the window to gay marriage, make a mad dash to get married, only to live under the threat that public sentiment will change, forcing the window shut again.

In city planning, it’s essentially called “legal nonconforming,” and citizens in Burbank and Glendale know all too well how those situations can end up.

Clearly, attention must now shift on evaluating California’s direct democracy. Too much power in the hands of a fickle mass, with only a simple majority vote as the main check, has time and again proven itself to be a painful formula.