The ground trembled again last week, another aftershock of one of the wrenching seismic shifts that always seem to start in California and skitter across the nation’s political and cultural plates. This time it was same-sex marriage, as the state Supreme Court took up the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that outlawed such unions.

The court hearing was the latest chapter in a saga that has enmeshed California, off and on, for nine years. In 2000, voters banned same-sex marriage. Last year, acting after San Francisco became the first city in the state to marry gay couples, the Supreme Court cleared the way for such unions. Opponents returned fire with Proposition 8, which put the ban into the Constitution. Statements of some justices during Thursday’s court hearing indicated that the proposition probably will stand — at least for now.

There was an odd familiarity to it all. As with the modern conservative movement, the antitax rebellion of the 1970s and a host of other less important, if useful, things — the hula hoop comes to mind — California was first in the mix.

Despite our conceit that the sun shines brighter on California’s golden denizens, residents here are really not so different from people everywhere else. Ponder surveys of voters taken last November in California and nationally, and the surprising conclusion is how similar we are. We are less white and more Latino, slightly richer and more educated, and we go to church a bit less. But we resemble the rest of the nation on many other measures — our age range, the number of kids living in our homes, and even our views on whether government, rather than businesses and individuals, should solve problems in a pinch.

The state does differ from the other 49, though, in its quest for change.

“California is the magnet for people from all the states who come here to dream, hope, or fit in,” said Bob Mulholland, who since landing here via Philadelphia and Vietnam 39 years ago has been a Democratic party advisor and unofficial electoral historian.

 See Another seismic shift emanates from California — this time on gay …

Los Angeles Times

Most of the jokes in the Internet video “Prop 8 — the Musical,” a comedic song-and-dance diatribe about the California ballot initiative defining marriage as existing only between a man and a woman, are in its lyrics.

Playing a black-suited religious conservative, John C. Reilly intones, “People, listen to our plea/They’ll teach our kids about sodomy.” Neil Patrick Harris, playing a flamboyant figure trying to reconcile the proposition’s supporters and opponents, sings, “Every time a gay or lesbian finds love at the parade/There’s money to be made.”

But there is one visual gag that is particularly bittersweet to Marc Shaiman, the creator and composer of the video: a credit that says Mr. Shaiman conceived and wrote this three-minute musical skit “six weeks later than he shoulda.”

As popular as “Prop 8 — the Musical” has been — it has been viewed more than 1.9 million times since it was posted on Wednesday on funnyordie.com — it is also a reminder to Mr. Shaiman and like-minded colleagues of how events might have turned out if they had been vocal and organized before Proposition 8 was approved by California voters last month.

“We stupidly allowed ourselves to be lulled into a sense of ‘everything’s fantastic now,’ ” Mr. Shaiman said in a recent telephone interview. “ ‘Everything’s changing, and this couldn’t possibly be voted into law.’ ”

The proposition passed on Election Day with 52 percent of the vote, including strong support from religious conservatives. On Nov. 20 the California Supreme Court said it would consider whether a voter-approved ban on same-sex unions was constitutional.

Mr. Shaiman, 49, an openly gay, Tony Award-winning songwriter whose résumé includes the stage and film musicals “Hairspray” and some of the bawdier songs in “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut,” came to create “Prop 8 — the Musical” somewhat inadvertently.

After the passage of the ballot initiative, he learned that Scott Eckern, the musical director of the California Musical Theate

See For This Songwriter, the Political Is Musical
New York Times, United States