In his National Journal column (temporarily available here), Stuart Taylor, who “wholeheartedly support[s] gay marriage,” condemns last week’s California supreme court decision on marriage as “an unfortunate exercise in judicial imperialism.” Some excerpts:

[T]he California court’s 121-page opinion was dishonest. This was most evident in its ritual denial of the fact that it was usurping legislative power: “Our task … is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership … but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution [emphasis in original].”

This was a deeply disingenuous dodge, if not a bald-faced lie, to conceal from gullible voters the fact that the decision was a raw exercise in judicial policy-making with no connection to the words or intent of the state constitution. It is inconceivable that anyone but a supporter of gay marriage “as a matter of policy” could have found in vague constitutional phrases such as “equal protection” a right to judicial invalidation of the marriage laws of every state and nation in the history of civilization….

The California court’s majority descended into especially slick sophistry when it suggested that the many gay-rights reforms that the state’s elected branches had already adopted were not a reason to let the democratic process work but rather a mandate for judicial imposition of gay marriage. The message to voters in other states may be: If you give the judges an inch on gay rights, they will take a mile.

Also disingenuous was the majority’s vague dismissal of the powerful argument by opponents of judicially imposed gay marriage that the made-up constitutional principle underlying the decision would also–if seriously applied–require the state to recognize polygamous and incestuous marriages among adults.

Chief Justice Ronald George’s majority opinion exuded impatience bordering on contempt for the government by the people that is the foundation of our democratic system. California’s voters and elected branches had already made great progress toward full legal equality for gay couples. They enjoyed all of the state-law rights and privileges of marriage except the name, which 61.4 percent of the voters had reserved for heterosexual couples in a 2000 ballot initiative. California’s domestic-partnership laws were more generous to gays than the laws of almost all other states and almost all nations.

But to the majority, this domestic-partnership-but-not-gay-marriage compromise–also advocated by Barack Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and John McCain–was “a mark of second-class citizenship.”…