More news sent to me by Leo:
Originally I dismissed the idea of recusal by Judge Walker, but this piece makes a strong legal case.
http://articles.sfgate.com/2010-08-11/opinion/22213940_1_parties-judge-walker-new-trial
It reads in part
The political philosopher John Locke noted in his Second Treatise on Civil Government that “it is unreasonable for men to be judges in their own cases (because) self-love will make men partial to themselves and their friends.” That sentiment, undoubtedly true, is actually codified in federal law. A judge is required to disqualify himself in any proceeding “in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned, including but not limited to instances in which: (a) the judge has … personal knowledge of disputed evidentiary facts concerning the proceeding; [or] … (c) the judge knows that the judge … has a financial … or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding.” Read more…
by Sheila Liaugminas
After declaring a California voter initiative wrongly passed because he disagreed with the citizens’ conclusion, Judge Vaughn Walker took it upon himself to declare anyone who disagreed with him ineligible to appeal to a higher court. Case closed, he thought. He was wrong. Read more…
Gotta love the first paragraph.
by Stephen J. Heaney
Re-examining the essential characteristics of marriage.
Abraham Lincoln once asked how many legs a dog has if we call a tail a leg. The answer, he said, is four: calling a tail a leg does not make it so. We chuckle and move on.
But what if people began to argue that a tail really is a leg? They might say that what defines the leg is that it is an appendage of the dog’s body, that it contains bone and muscle covered with skin and fur—just like a tail. Tails just happen to come out of the body at a different angle than other legs. When a tail hangs down low, who can tell the difference? Read more…
Oh boy. Here we go.
by Walter R. Schumm
The evidence shows that gay marriage is equal to or better than traditional marriage, according to a Federal Court judge. But what sort of evidence?
In one sense, Judge Walker can’t be blamed for his decision since he was provided a great deal of inaccurate and incomplete information through the trial process. I hope that future amicus briefs will be able to correct those deficiencies. Read more…
by Mary Rice Hasson
What gays can teach straights about marriage, according to some people.
Of all the things that Tom and Tina Average might want for their marriage, one they have quite likely never thought of is innovation. It is the kind of word they might look for in the home improvement pages of the weekend paper or on their favourite consumer website, but not in a marriage guidance brochure. Read more…
by Sheila Liaugminas
As if there were only a couple…
Besides every other issue dividing politicians and the culture, which seem to abound right now, the battle for the legalization of same-sex marriage is throwing more heat than light on the larger issue of human rights.
In the past two weeks, Hawaii’s governor had to pronounce on state legislation that would have permitted gay marriage. She said no. Read more…
What do you all think about this article?
by Frank Turek
When one judge overturned the will of more than seven million Californians last week in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, he listed 80 supposed “findings of fact” (FF) as evidence that Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. Many of those 80 findings are not facts at all. They’re lies or distortions. Read more…
By Patrick McIlheran of the Journal Sentinel
Let’s look at how the gay-marriage thing in California has unfolded so far:
The state’s Supreme Court in 2008, on a one-vote margin, decides to redefine marriage to dump one key parameter that had always and everywhere in human history been part of marriage: that it be between complementary sexes, not identical ones.
Within months, the voters of the state overrule the court, amending their constitution to say that, no, you can’t redefine basic social institutions against the will of the people. The losers sue the state.
And Wednesday, a federal judge – a judge, as in one – overrules the people, ruling, among other things, that “gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.” It doesn’t? Read more…
Radio Derb this week discussed marriage redefinition:
Just as the Brits would much rather have been left alone with their familiar Britishness, without having two million people of utterly alien faith and folkways dumped on them, so Californians would rather be left alone with the familiar institution of marriage as a union of one man with one woman, as a well-tried social unit for the generation and nurturing of children. Read more…
Kathleen McKinley proposes a compromise on the issue of marriage redefinition in her article “The Gay Marriage Compromise.”
I can promise you that if Prop 8 were voted on tomorrow, and the exact same language was used, but instead the word “marriage” was replaced with the words “civil unions,” it would pass. And most everyone would be fine with it. As some other guy, not as well known as Kinky once said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Read more…
In response to my earlier post about romantic love being more like addiction and quite a lot less like some deep spiritual connection, the comments section noted that my worldview is “sterile.”
Maybe.
But this view of romance is also most likely true. Having a clear eyed view of the world has many advantages.
But that worldview is liberating. Think about it. In the realm of love and marriage, knowing the truth about the nature of romantic love can save a person from the disappointments consequent of unrealistic expectations. This leads to happiness. The fantasy realm of romanticism can lead to some very bad consequences. Heck, don’t take it from me. Just read Madam Bovary.
Theodore Dalrymple discusses some of the bad effects of sentimentality, a necessary precursor of the idealization of romantic love. (Emphasis added).
WE should try hard to think clearly, said the great French scientist, mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, for such is the foundation of morality.
Sentimentality is one of the worst enemies of clear thought and therefore of morality. It is the preference of what we would like to be true over what actually is true, it persuades us that we are more compassionate than we really are. Read more…
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
We’ve discussed on this blog before how if same-sex ‘marriage’ is allowed to be masqueraded as a civil right, then all First Amendment rights that have to do with moral and/or religious beliefs will thereafter be trumped by any so-called right predicated on ‘gender identity’. And in fact wherever same-sex ‘marriage’ has been recognized the right to freely and fully practice one’s faith, express one’s beliefs – in speech or in writing, or even participate in the political process has been severely abridged whenever exercising any of those rights would offend LGBT sensibilities. (Canada is an excellent case in study…) Read more…
Let’s play a little game. A husband and a wife have a baby via, er, natural insemination. For some reason, a court needs to determine parentage. What objective standards could the court use to make that determination?
Well, DNA tests can be used. That gives an objective answer.
There are other scientific tests that can also be used. These tests may be less reliable than DNA, but these tests are a tool that can give an answer that is accurate to a given degree.
Then there’s the presumption that any child born to the woman during the marriage belongs to her husband. This rule takes advantage of a phenomenon that is well known– that a wife’s most frequent (usually only) sex partner is her husband. This is a clear rule founded on observable reality. One can objectively determine whether the rule has been followed. Furthermore, the presumption is rebuttable to take care of those situations in which there have been some, um, indiscretions. (Some would say not nearly rebuttable enough, but that’s beside the point). So, objective facts can counteract the rule when warranted.
Okay. Let’s try a different scenario. Two women come to the same court. They have been raising a child together. Read more…
Welcome readers from the Good As You site. I just wanted to clarify for all of you the fact that I have indeed read the Iowa decision, Varnum v Brien. I believe it was wrongly decided and poorly argued. I have written about it in two separate places, which are now posted on the Ruth Institute article archive. The Institution Formerly Known as Marriage argued that the Iowa court ignored the essential public purpose of marriage, namely to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another, and replaced that essential public purpose with inessential private purposes. I made that argument in my talk in Augusta ME on the bus tour.
In How Iowa Happened, I reviewed some of the behavior of the Court that undermine their own credibility. Read more…
by Matthew J. Franck
The latest decision from our judicial overlords on same-sex marriage spells trouble for republican constitutionalism and the institution of marriage.
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was grounded on a fear of judges run amok. This past Thursday, federal district court judge Joseph Tauro of Boston justified this fear when he struck down section 3 of the act in two separate cases, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In the Gill case, Judge Tauro held that the law unjustly denied various federal benefits to spouses in same-sex marriages contracted under Massachusetts law, contrary to the equal protection principle. Meanwhile, in the HHS case, Tauro ruled that the state itself was the victim of an unconstitutional intrusion by the federal government on its reserved powers under the Tenth Amendment. Read more…
Regarding their July 13 Argentines for the Children demonstration before the Argentinian Congress was to vote on traditional marriage: “The demonstration gathered 60000 people in a very cold day. Some others estimation spoke about 130000, but we think the first one is the correct one. It was plenty of families, young people and old, all claiming for a family with a mum and a dad and the rights of the children to have them. Read more…
Fifty years ago, if you were to say that the definition of marriage should be expanded to include the union of two men or two women, you would have gotten some strange looks.
Nowadays, if you say that the definition of marriage should NOT be changed, you are immoral. Strangely, you are NOT immoral if you harass, yell at, condemn or kick someone in the jimmies for saying that the definition of marriage should not be changed.
Does anybody else think this turn of events is strange? How did such a strange thing happen? Read more…
the news coverage of the NOM rally in NH got my quote right, but got my name wrong. Oh well. I could have easily straightened him out, if he had asked.
Dr. Ruth Roback, who heads the NOM-financed Ruth Institute, challenged the view that same-sex marriage does not degrade the lives of heterosexual couples.
Once same-sex marriage is made legal, Roback claimed state governments through education, social policies and other means try to force different social mores on the public.
“Marriage is a natural, pre-political institution; same-sex marriage is entirely a creation of the state,” Roback said. “Same-sex marriage is a hostile takeover of civil society by the state.”
This story in the Buenos Aires Herald reports on the groups rallying for natural marriage, but it doesn’t give an estimate of the crowd. We’ll have to rely on our friends on the ground there, to let us know their estimates of the numbers of people there. As in the US, this cause of natural marriage is an inter-faith effort.
The demonstration was organized by the Lay Department of the Argentine Episcopal Conference (DEPLAI), the Christian Alliance of Evangelic Churches (ACIERA), the Pentecostal Evangelic Confraternity Federation (FECEP), and self-convened families, that were joined by representatives of the Muslim and Jewish communities.
Read more…
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