See the CA propositions - they turn into insane population wide gaslighting competitions.
So you can see even if you literally amend the constitution in california by popular referendum, those in power can just tell the populace to go fuck themselves and they won't be recognizing it, no matter that the constitution is the supreme law of the state.
> So you can see even if you literally amend the constitution in california by popular referendum, those in power can just tell the populace to go fuck themselves and they won't be recognizing it, no matter that the constitution is the supreme law of the state.
Your argument would make sense if the courts had overturned Prop 8 on the basis that it was unconstitutional at the state level. But that's not what happened.
The state case against Prop 8 was upheld by the courts. The federal courts ruled against it, in a completely separate case, on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause in the US constitution. Prop 8 amended the state constitution; it did not amend the US constitution.
It's also a moot point, because Prop 8 was also repealed by a subsequent ballot initiative, with 61% of the vote.
What problem is it solving again?
And notably, California is one of the most consistently gay friendly states and still flip flopped on this exact topic.
The more direct the democracy (and the shorter the timeframes between elections!), the easier it is to game the population or poke people’s buttons and make them vote on things they later regret - or deeply enjoy.
The whole court system and bill of rights is to try to put guard rails, so there aren’t (for example) purges/genocides, removing a little under half the populations rights, etc. etc. but there is only so much rules can do.
There is no free lunch.
Notably, imagine direct democracy and the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic]!
Without guardrails on the levers of power, a lot of people would have died. As it is, a lot of lives still got ruined.
People recoil at the idea, but isn't that sort of what the founders were doing? They had beautiful, lofty ideals on paper, but they were all wealthy, white, male landowners. Their idea of "the People" might have been a wee bit more limited than the generally accepted definition today.
If everyone has to be paying attention all the time (and it would be 150% of the time with modern society), everyone is susceptible to being drowned in bullshit and either checking out or being manipulated.
Even with what we have now, that is exactly what is going on. Direct democracy would be even worse.