December 6: From the California federal court house for the Prop 8 trial Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse will be live-blogging at http://www.prop8case.com/.
These posts will also be copied here, on the Ruth Blog.
Another site to check out for marriage news is NOMblog.com.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the court, is said to be particularly influenced by trends in international law of human rights. If so this latest ruling by the European Court of Human Rights may be good news for Prop 8!
The EU court refused to consider a challenge to Austria’s marriage laws by a gay couple, in essence reaffirming an earlier explicit decision that gay marriage is NOT a basic human right!
http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2010/11/30/european-states-will-not-be-forced-to-allow-gay-marriage/
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/12/01/prop-8-supporters-calling-for-reinhardt-recusal/
On Monday, we blogged the news that Judge Stephen Reinhardt had been selected to serve on the Ninth Circuit panel that next week will hear arguments on Proposition 8, the California measure passed in 2008 that bans same-sex marriage.
But will Reinhardt, known as one of the most strident liberals on the federal bench, stay on the panel? Read more…
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
Yes, there is some good news about Judge Stephen Reinhardt being one of the three judges drawn at random to hear the Prop 8 case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Some people are worried about this, since he is notoriously liberal. His wife also has significant connections to the case, which some argue should be grounds for recusal.
I’m not worried however. He can either: Read more…
by Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D.
I hear this question all the time when I travel. I heard it this fall in Michigan and New Jersey and North Carolina. The Prop 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, will be in court again on December 6th. I will be live-blogging from the courtroom. I expect the posts will be at www.prop8case.com and at www.ruthblog.org. This case is extremely important, no matter where you live. Perry v. Schwarzenegger is a federal case. The court is being asked to rule on the question of whether the requirement that marriage consist of one man and one woman violates the U.S. Constitution. If the courts find that there is a federal right to same sex marriage, there will be same sex marriage all over the country, immediately. End of story. You care about this case. Read more…
There are a few more podcasts up for your listening pleasure–one from our recent “It Takes a Family” conference, and the other two are interviews of Dr J on Issues, Etc.
Dr J gave the opening talk at ITAF 2010; entitled Marriage and Freedom in Society, it discusses what marriage does for society and some of the consequences (especially those relating to children) if we choose to dissolve or weaken it. Some of the areas she covers include divorce law, state intervention, and parenthood.
The two Issues, Etc interviews discuss the response to Judge Walker’s attitude about the Prop 8 case (Shot in the Arm…or the Foot?) and another group of Mama Grizzlies, this one opposed to Sarah Palin (Sarah Palin vs. Mama Grizzlies). Dr J’s exposition on the arrogance of both subjects is excellent.
(August 11, 2010) Dr J appears on radio program Point of View, where she and host Penna Dexter discuss Judge Walker’s recent Proposition 8 ruling.
From RealClearPolitics:
But for Judge Walker there is an odor of illegitimacy about merely “moral” views expressed in legislation, especially when morality finds support in religion. Thus he declares that Proposition 8 expresses only a “private moral choice,” not a considered public morality. And thus in his tendentious “findings of fact,” he makes the astonishing claim-purporting to be a fact found at trial, not a judgment of his own-that “religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful . . . harm gays and lesbians.”
Perhaps here, in this nadir of absurdity, we have found the real fundament of the judge’s thinking. Citizens who wish to defend the institution of marriage as they and their families have known it all their lives, and for countless generations, are irrational bigots. Worse still, if they are moved to act because of the union of their faith with their moral opinions, they are crazy religious folk, bent only on harming others whom they merely “dislike” on grounds that cannot possibly be defended before a tribunal of right-thinking people. And those others, the same-sex-couple plaintiffs? They must be rescued from the “harm” to their feelings that results from their exclusion from a historic civil and moral institution that has never hitherto been thought to have been built for them.
The bludgeoning going on here in the name of “tolerance” and “equality” is amazing. Read the whole thing here.
Michael Medved has an opinion piece worth reading over at AOLnews.com on the recent Prop 8 ruling. I think the 7 points he makes are very well-stated and cogent to the discussion.
1. “Proposition 8 was a mean-spirited ban on gay marriage.”
Proposition 8 banned nothing. The ubiquitous headlines describing this voter-mandated change in the California Constitution as a “gay marriage ban” amount to an egregious example of journalistic malpractice. The entire proposition consisted of only 14 words: “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” This simple statement imposes no restrictions and issues no commands regarding the behavior of private citizens; it merely demands a change in the actions of government. Proposition 8 did nothing to interfere with gay couples in registering for state-recognized civil unions, participating in church ceremonies consecrating their love, forming lifetime commitments, raising children or concluding comprehensive contractual arrangement to share all aspects of life and property. The proposition simply says that government will not get involved in any of these private or public processes by calling such relationships a marriage.2. “Proposition 8 singled out gays and lesbians for discriminatory treatment.”
The proposition never mentioned gays, lesbians or any other individuals, whatever their sexual orientation. It didn’t discriminate among individuals; it drew distinctions among relationships. Under the proposition, a gay male and a straight male would face exactly the same options in marriage; there is no relationship open to the straight citizen that’s denied to his gay neighbor. The fact that gay people want government sanction for a different sort of relationship, creating radically new forms of marriage, reflects their desire to transform institution, not a demand for equal, long-established rights.
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