(July 14, 2010) Massachusetts judge Joseph Tauro has ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. In this installment of her weekly interview on Issues, Etc., Dr J and Todd Wilken discuss the ramifications of this decision. She also brings us up to speed on NOM’s Summer of Marriage Tour (Dr J is participating in the New England leg of it this year).
Might as well post this as well.
by Sheila Liaugminas
Sometimes, the Proposition 8 battle seems surreal. But then, so do other serious, emotional and intense conflicts playing out in the nation’s courts and city halls and classrooms and media, over what we knew not long ago as core Judeo-Christian traditional values. Read more…
The latest podcast is up–Dr J’s weekly Issues, Etc interview is one day early this week due to San Diego county’s June 8 elections. She and Todd Wilken discuss judicial activism and how it’s given rise to many of the issues we’re hotly debating today in American government and culture.
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…
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.
Ed Whelan is sounding the alarm against the outrageous plan of Judge Vaughn Walker to televise the Prop 8 case. Bench Memos on National Review Online.
Or just a lot of hot air? You decide. I can’t keep up with British politics.
It is true though, that the UK has been much more aggressively anti-marriage than the US, as Patricia Morgan has ably documented. I reviewed her book here and reprinted here.
so says Maggie Gallagher, of our sister organization, the National Organization for Marriage, over at NRO. Here is one of my favorite reasons:
4. Progressives are often wrong about the future. Read more…
I wonder how many of the anti-Prop 8 acts of intimidation and vandalism were reported as hate crimes? Tom Messner, of the Heritage Foundation, details some of the specific acts that were reported during the fall of 2008 in California. The FBI reports for the city of San Jose, for instance, that there were 19 racially motivated hate crime incidents, 7 motivated by religion, and 15 motivated by sexual orientation.
So, were the Prop 8 supporters who had their cars keyed and their houses egged counted in any of these categories? Politically-motivated intimidation is just as destructive to the body politic, arguably even more so, than intimidation based on the listed categories. After all, our ability to hold elections or have civil political discourse is threatened by politically motivated crimes.
By Jeff Jacoby Globe Columnist
ON ELECTION DAY, voters in Maine repealed a six-month-old state law authorizing same-sex marriage. Maine was the 31st state in which the legal definition of marriage was put to a vote, and the 31st in which voters rejected gay marriage. And once again, the response from many on the losing side was bitter. Read more…
GLENN ADAMS and DAVID CRARY- Associated Press Writers
Big victory for traditional marriage in Maine
PORTLAND, Maine- Voters in Maine have rejected an effort by lawmakers there to impose homosexual “marriage” in that state.
Gay marriage has now lost in every single state – 31 in all – in which it has been put to a popular vote. Gay-rights activists had hoped to buck that trend in Maine – known for its liberal-minded electorate – and mounted an energetic, well-financed campaign. With 87 percent of the precincts reporting, proponents of traditional marriage had 53 percent of the votes. Read more…
Over at No Left Turns blog, Julie Ponzi takes aim at the equality argument for same sex marriage. This is a very significant argument, because in a very real sense, this is the only argument the marriage radicals have. Think about it: “it’s not fair; you’re being mean to us.” That is all they have. The Equal Protection argument the lawyers like to bring up is just a gussied-up version of “it’s not fair.” So, being able to explain why we think the equality argument is inapplicable is a slam dunk. If we win that, we win, because equality is quite literally, all they have. Read more…
America loved and still loves the idea of having a black president. However, they don’t much care for this particular president and his policies. More than that, there are black Americans who love the idea of natural marriage and respecting life in the womb and protecting young people from premature sexualizing. They are less enthused about the Idea of a Black President than they used to be.
This is the sign of growing political maturity in our country. As long as we can talk about issues, and not descend to mudslinging, we can create a new coalition for a more humane social order.
The Bangor Daily News is doing soemthing squirrly: they reverted to their returns at 5% reporting. Now they are showing a server error, with no results at all.
Ballotpedia is reporting the Yes vote up to 49.3% as of 5 minutes ago, 9:54 PM EST. Watch this to see if it is a real trend.
Everyone, keep an eye on the Bangor Daily News for election hanky panky. There is no reason for their server to go down, just as the Yes on 1 votes are going up….
With 17% of the precints reporting, the count is now 48.7% Yes on 1, and 51.3% No. There is a trend in the direction of natural marriage winning this election. This is how it was during election night for Prop 8. The whole country was ga-ga over Obama, and we were just watching the Prop 8 numbers. They slowly tilted toward the Prop 8 victory that eventually shook the nation.
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