I'm With Cole. Bring on President Palin Already

If you needed any more examples to prove that our state's awesome Initiative & Referendum process has run completely amok, here you go.

California Secretary of State Debra Bowen today authorized the backer of an initiative that would ban divorce to begin collecting signatures to put the proposed constitutional amendment before voters.

John Marcotte now has until March 22, 2010, to collect 694,354 signatures of registered voters in order to get the measure on the ballot next year. The proposal would change the California Constitution to "eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California."

Couples could still get their marriages annulled under the proposal.

Here is the official text of the initiative:

ELIMINATES THE LAW ALLOWING MARRIED COUPLES TO DIVORCE. INITIATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Changes the California Constitution to eliminate the ability of married couples to get divorced in California. Preserves the ability of married couples to seek an annulment. Summary of estimate by Legislative Analyst and Director of Finance of fiscal impact on state and local government: Savings to the state of up to hundreds of millions of dollars annually for support of the court system due to the elimination of divorce proceedings.

EPIC JOURNALISM FAIL. Here's the bill's author (that's him in the picture) on what kinds of marriages could be "annulled".

Rob Cockerham: John Marcotte. You've filed a petition with the Secretary of State, in an effort to get a voter's initative on the California 2010 ballot.

John Marcotte: Yes. Filed the paperwork on September 1. It's the "2010 California Marriage Protection Act." I am trying to ban divorce in the state of California.

RC: Ok. So your act, if it became law, would make marriage undissolvable.

John: Exactly. The only exception would be if the marriage was "voidable" -- if you married an 8-year-old, you don't get to keep her. She goes back on the shelf. You can't marry the mentally incapacitated, etc.

RC: Ah, ok, so most normal marriages would be irreversable [sic].

John: 99.99% of all marriages would be set in stone. It's a return to traditional values.

RC: Wow, that is amazing. Could it really happen? What steps remain to make this initiative into a valid, enforced law?

John: I am trying to extend the good work done with Proposition 8 last year. It could really happen. The United States has not always had divorce as an institution the way we do now. As a ballot initiative it bypasses the legislature and the governor. It's the will of the people made law.

Bwahahahahahahahaaaaa!!!!

"If you married an 8-year old, you don't get to keep her" . . . These people fixate on the kinkiest shit. Why is that?

Other than that, if I wanted to deter as many people as possible from ever getting married in the first place, I could think of no more effective way to accomplish this than passing this initiative into law. Who the fuck in his or her right mind would wanna roll the dice, knowing that once they'd signed the contract, it could never be rescinded? So your wife turns out to be a two-timing gold-digger? Too bad, pal, you're stuck with her. You say your husband is a serial abuser? Shut up, toots---you need to be obedient to your man the way John Marcotte is obedient to Our Lord. Unless you've got a thing for children or the retarded, that is, in which case you've got an out.

The truly amazing thing is, if it qualifies for the general-election ballot---and given the number of insane ballot initiatives that seem to qualify every two years, I have little doubt that it won't---this exercise in delusion will still end up garnering some 25 percent of the vote. Any measure that turns up on the ballot in California is good for at least that amount of votes. It really does seem sometimes that we as a people are in a race to prove Darwin wrong, doesn't it?

Oh, and can the serious journalists at LA Times get a little more acquainted with teh Google, please?

---Vitelius