The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution.

That was not in fact the central question.  The central question was whether the representative nature of the California state government, including its initiative provisions, would be upheld.

They were not.  The California Supreme Court asserted its ultimate power today in a way that is shameful and deeply destructive of the ability of a free people to govern themselves. 

UPDATE:  From Justice Baxter' opinion partially concurring and partially dissenting:

Only one other American state recognizes the right the majority announces today. So far, Congress, and virtually every court to consider the issue, has rejected it. Nothing in our Constitution, express or implicit, compels the majority’s startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of marriage —an understanding recently confirmed by an initiative law — is no longer valid. California statutes already recognize same-sex unions and grant them all the substantive legal rights this state can bestow. If there is to be a further sea change in the social and legal understanding of marriage itself, that evolution should occur by similar democratic means. The majority forecloses this ordinary democratic process, and, in doing so, oversteps its authority....

But a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the People themselves.Undeterred by the strong weight of state and federal law and authority, the majority invents a new constitutional right, immune from the ordinary process of legislative consideration. The majority finds that our Constitution suddenly demands no less than a permanent redefinition of marriage, regardless of the popular will....

I cannot join this exercise in legal jujitsu, by which the Legislature’s own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People’s will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference. Though the majority insists otherwise, its pronouncement seriously oversteps the judicial power. The majority purports to apply certain fundamentalprovisions of the state Constitution, but it runs afoul of another just as fundamental— article III, section 3, the separation of powers clause. This clause declares that “[t]he powers of state government are legislative, executive, and judicial,” and that“[p]ersons charged with the exercise of one power may not exercise either of the others” except as the Constitution itself specifically provides. (Italics added.)

History confirms the importance of the judiciary’s constitutional role as a check against majoritarian abuse. Still, courts must use caution when exercising the potentially transformative authority to articulate constitutional rights. Otherwise, judges with limited accountability risk infringing upon our society’s most basic shared premise — the People’s general right, directly or through their chosen legislators, to decide fundamental issues of public policy for themselves.

Judicial restraint is particularly appropriate where, as here, the claimed constitutional entitlement is of recent conception and challenges the most fundamental assumption about a basic social institution.

The majority has violated these principles. It simply does not have the right to erase, then recast, the age-old definition of marriage, as virtually all societies have understood it, in order to satisfy its own contemporary notions of equality and justice.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced yesterday that it will evaluate whether four kinds of seals inhabiting Alaska's Bering Sea should be placed on the endangered species list because of melting sea ice.

In December, an environmental group, the Center for Biological Diversity, petitioned NOAA's Fisheries Service to list ribbon seals as facing extinction because global warming has affected the extent of ice cover in both the Bering and Chukchi seas, where the seals live. NOAA officials said they will review the status of bearded, spotted and ringed seals, as well, because they all use the same sea ice in different ways, at different times of the year.

The first person prosecuted under the act was heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, who had an affair with a prostitute named Lucille Cameron. Johnson married Cameron so that she couldn't be made to testify against him. Belle Schreiber, a prostitute that had at some point left a brothel and traveled with him to another state, was the next in line to testify against Johnson. He was eventually prosecuted and sentenced to the maximum penalty of a year and a day in prison.

In 2006, federal judicial salaries ranged from $212,000 for the Chief Justice to $165,200 for federal district judges. Cost-of-living adjustments aside, federal judges haven’t seen a pay increase since 1991.

Finally, I am resolved to continue Chief Justice Rehnquist’s twenty-year pursuit of equitable salaries for federal judges. Over the past year, congressional leaders and a wide range of groups that value a capable and independent Judiciary have made progress on this matter. The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 28 to five that would help reverse the steady erosion of judicial salaries since 1969, the benchmark year that Congress has utilized in recent years for assessing federal pay levels. The bill would restore judicial pay to the same level that judges would have received if Congress had granted them the same cost-of-living pay adjustments that other federal employees have received since 1989—not a full restoration but a significant one. The Senate Judiciary Committee was considering a similar bill when the 2007 Session ended. We are grateful for the continuing support of the bipartisan leadership in both the House and the Senate, as well as the support of the President, on this vital legislation. The legislation reflects a commitment on the part of the Legislative and Executive Branches to carry out their constitutional responsibilities with respect to the Judicial Branch, and I urge prompt passage as a first order of business in the new session.

The pending legislation strikes a reasonable compromise for the dedicated federal judges who, year after year, have discharged their important duties for steadily eroding real pay. This salary restoration legislation is vital now that the denial of annual increases over the years has left federal trial judges—the backbone of our system of justice—earning about the same as (and in some cases less than) first-year lawyers at firms in major cities, where many of the judges are located.

I do not need to rehearse the compelling arguments in favor of this legislation. They have already been made by distinguished jurists, lawyers, and economists in congressional hearings, letters, and editorials—and seconded by a broad spectrum of commercial, governmental, and public interest organizations that appear as litigants before the courts. I simply ask once again for a moment’s reflection on how America would look in the absence of a skilled and independent Judiciary. Consider the critical role of our courts in preserving individual liberty, promoting commerce, protecting property, and ensuring that every person who appears in an American court can expect fair and impartial justice. The cost of this long overdue legislation—less than .004% of the annual federal budget—is miniscule in comparison to what is at stake.

Read the Chief Justice's entire report for its overview of the state of the federal judiciary, but take a moment to let your legislators know that you support the idea of fixing judicial pay.  The conventional wisdom is that Washington is broken.  Well, the federal judiciary isn't, at least not yet.  But an exodus of judges or the inability to recruit superstars in the future would quickly diminish the federal courts' well-deserved reputation as the finest and fairest courts in the world.  Fixing judicial pay would be a great step towards butressing the rule of law, and one on which liberals and conservatives alike could agree.