California's Proposition 8 Unconstitutional?

According to the Washington Post, a federal appeals panel in San Francisco ruled yesterday that California’s Proposition 8, banning same sex marriage, is unconstitutional.

This could lead to a consideration of the issue by the United States Supreme Court.

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“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” U.S. Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote. “The Constitution simply does not allow for laws of this sort.”

Six states and the District of Columbia allow gay couples to marry, and three others are considering joining them. Polls show a striking generational difference in acceptance, with young people far more in favor of allowing same-sex unions.
In 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 that same-sex couples could not be denied the right to wed, and over the next five months, about 18,000 such couples took marriage vows. But that fall, 52 percent of California voters supported Proposition 8, amending the state Constitution to validate “only a marriage between a man and a woman.”
Reinhardt said this “taking away” of a right by the majority was not allowed.
“By using their initiative power to target a minority group and withdraw a right that it possessed, without a legitimate reason for doing so, the people of California violated the Equal Protection Clause” of the federal Constitution, Reinhardt wrote.