Ruth Institute Blog

That’s the question Colleen Carroll Campbell asks. in reference to the recent story about a Catholic school in Colorado that denied readmission to the child of a lesbian couple. As she put it:

Boulder’s vociferous gay-rights activists mobilized to protest the priest, the parish and the Archdiocese of Denver, brandishing signs outside the church that plaintively asked: “What would Jesus do?”

For the reporters breathlessly covering the story and many Catholics, the answer was obvious. Jesus would allow the children to stay in the school. He would tell the teachers not to worry about the conflict between their duty to teach Catholic doctrine on marriage and their desire to protect the feelings of students being raised by a couple that flouted that doctrine in a particularly obvious way. Read more…

Here’s something relating to Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s big article, also on this blog.

The Case Against Ted Olson [Maggie Gallagher]

In the NYT, Ed Meese strikes back hard against the idea there’s anything conservative about using the federal courts to overturn the free and fair election that produced Prop 8. Read more…

By Jennifer Roback Morse

Two high-profile lawyers are challenging California’s constitutional ban on gay marriage.

California’s high-profile federal lawsuit against Proposition 8, which begins in court on January 11, appears to be about creating a federal case for same sex marriage. But in fact, much more is at stake. Lurking in the shadows of this case is a breathtaking expansion of judicial interference with perfectly valid elections. Whatever your views about Proposition 8, we surely should be able to agree that special interest groups can’t go into court to overturn elections they don’t like. Read more…

Regular readers of my blog and newsletter will recall that I analyzed the Supreme Court of Iowa’s ruling that gendered marriage violates the state constitution. You could pretty much predict how the court would rule, by the decisions they made about what counted as permissible evidence.

the trial court refused to admit five out of the eight expert witnesses presented to them. These experts covered a wide range of issues, including the ethics of artificial reproductive technologies, the rights of children to be raised by their parents, the procreative purpose of marriage, the history and meaning of marriage, and the significance of gender differences in parenting. The trial court refused to hear the testimony of Allan Carlson, author of five books on the history of marriage, Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, and Stephen Rhodes, political science professor at the University of Virginia. This is the very sort of evidence that courts in other states, such as New York, have found persuasive.

After refusing to hear their testimony, the court had the nerve to declare a whole list of facts were “undisputed.” Instead of listening to both sides and deciding impartially, the court lifted the “facts” directly from the brief of the same-sex “marriage” advocates.

The Iowa Supreme Court is the very court that made this infamous statement in a footnote:

“The research appears to strongly support the conclusion that same-sex couples foster the same wholesome environment as opposite-sex couples and suggests that the traditional notion that children need a mother and a father to be raised into healthy, well-adjusted adults is based more on stereotype than anything else.”

The court offered no evidence for the remarkable claim that believing kids need a mother and a father is based on stereotype.  And if you took that statement out of the context of the same sex marriage debate, and tried to offer it as a general proposition, it is certainly false.

In her syndicated column, my friend and colleague Maggie Gallagher makes these points about the upcoming Prop 8 trial. 1. The constitutionality of Proposition 8 should be a matter of law, not a matter of facts. But Judge Walker has ruled that they will have a trial about the facts. Ordinarily, findings of fact by a lower court, cannot be overturned by a higher court.  So the more of his opinions he can stuff into the box labelled “fact,” the harder it will be to overturn. 2. The court has ruled that the private correspondence of the campaign, revealing the “motives” of the campaign are a fair subject for the trial. This is an outrage: the motives of the campaign or the voters should not be on trial. 3. The judge has ordered that the trial be televised, in defiance of federal rules.

Bottom line: the voters of CA are on trial for having the temerity to vote against same sex marriage. Money quote:

After Prop. 8, gay couples continue to enjoy unmolested all the legal civil rights of marriage under California law through civil unions. Who will stand up for the core civil rights of the people of California and the rest of the USA to participate in democracy without fear?

Certainly not Judge Vaughn Walker.

Judge Walker’s decision to televise the Prop 8 trial gravely prejudices the outcome of the trial,  Bench Memos on National Review Online.

In addition to its illegality (see Part 2), Judge Walker’s televising order threatens unfair and irreparable—and wildly asymmetric—prejudice to the parties and witnesses supporting Proposition 8.  For that reason, his order should be vacated before trial begins next Monday.*… Read more…

It wasn’t even close: 20-14 in the NJ Senate. My colleague at the National Organization for Marriage, Brian Brown, predicted this.