Surprising headline from the San Francisco Chronicle: "Justices seem to be leaning in favor of Prop. 8."
I don't find it surprising because I thought Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that amended the the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman. Legal challenges were inevitable, but Prop. 8's constitutional defeat was not. I'm just surprised the Chronicle's already started the 10 count.
Here's the story:
"There have been initiatives that have taken away rights from minorities by majority vote" and have been upheld by the courts, said Chief Justice Ronald George. "Isn't that the system we have to live with?"
George wrote the majority opinion in the court's 4-3 ruling in May striking down California's ban on same-sex marriages - which voters, in turn, reversed in November by approving Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being only between a man and a woman.
Another member of last year's majority, Justice Joyce Kennard, said the challenge to Prop. 8 brought by advocates of same-sex marriage involved "a completely different issue" from the court's ruling that the marriage laws violated gays' and lesbians' rights to be treated equally and wed the partner of their choice.
"Here we are dealing with the power of the people, the inalienable right, to amend the Constitution," Kennard said. Speaking to a lawyer for same-sex couples, she said those who want to overturn the voters' decision "have the right to go to the people and present an initiative."
There were some indications of divisions among the justices on the validity of Prop. 8 during the hearing, which lasted more than three hours at the court's San Francisco headquarters. But on a separate issue, all seven appeared to agree that the 18,000 same-sex couples who married before Prop. 8 passed would remain legally wed.
The Los Angeles Times says more of the same. Something that's different and worth reading is this article that Mollie Ziegler Hemingway wrote for Christianity Today before Thursday's California Supreme Court hearing. Here's the lede:
Obnoxious mobs that won't tolerate disagreement don't usually win supporters.
A manager at a Los Angeles Mexican restaurant was targeted for her $100 contribution in support of traditional marriage. Protesters hounded her out of her job, and did the same to a Sacramento theater director and the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival. Churches and Mormon temples were vandalized. The mainstream media ran an all-out public relations campaign in support of same-sex marriage. Hollywood quickly put together "Prop. 8: The Musical," an Internet video that mocked Jesus, the Bible, and Christians.
"Want to cause a nice long backlash to gay rights? That's the way to do it," said lesbian social critic Camille Paglia.
Obnoxious, bigoted mobs that won't tolerate any disagreement don't usually win supporters. Or, as the usually insufferable Objectivist Ayn Rand said, "Argument from intimidation is a confession of intellectual impotence." Of course, if the media are to be believed, same-sex marriage is a done deal. "Same-sex marriage is inevitable. It just takes time," a Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist wrote.
The conventional wisdom is that traditional marriage is a demographically lost cause. Younger voters are more likely to support same-sex marriage than older voters, we're repeatedly reminded. Indeed, 61 percent of voters over 65 supported Prop. 8, while 61 percent of people under 30 voted against it.
But if history and demographics are on the side of same-sex marriage, one wonders why journalists, Hollywood executives, and gay activists didn't just sit tight and wait. Why voluntarily sabotage their cause with a coordinated campaign of bigoted, violent, and hateful reactions to recent public votes on the matter?
Despite the story pushed by the mainstream media, the only statistics that really matter are at the ballot box. And marriage supporters have been victorious in each of the 33 states that have put the issue up for vote. The only significant success the same-sex marriage crowd has had has been achieved by judicial fiat. In California, a never-before-assembled coalition of evangelicals, Catholics, and Mormons raised $40 million and generated hundreds of thousands of volunteers.
"In spite of repeated efforts by gay activists and mainstream media types to portray this as an issue nobody but the gay-rights people really care about, the Prop. 8 victory itself demonstrates the marriage issue is drawing new attention," said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage.
And just because younger voters support same-sex marriage now doesn't mean their attitudes won't change. As people age, they tend to get married, have children, and worship more regularly - all of which weigh heavily in voting decisions.
The violent mobs and sneering media confirm one of the arguments made by traditional marriage proponents: Same-sex marriage and religious freedom are on a collision course.
That collision course came up when I voted no on Prop. 8. I still would prefer to not see government in the business of marriage, but I also don't think government should force religious folks in non-emergency professions to perform services they believe God abhors.
In her article, Mollie notes a few of these cases:
A lesbian couple in Albuquerque successfully sued a Christian photographer because she declined to shoot their commitment ceremony. When Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage, Catholic organizations had no option but to shut down their adoption services.
The California Supreme Court ruled that doctors must provide reproductive services to lesbians despite religious objections. A Methodist camp in New Jersey lost its tax exemption after it told a lesbian couple they could have their commitment ceremony anywhere except in buildings that are used for religious services. The list goes on.
There is a difference between preaching tolerance and legally mandating acceptance.
(Originally published at The God Blog.)
Posted by Sarah Pulliam Bailey on March 6, 2009 3:14PM
Comments
The California doctor case is based upon the state's public accommodations law -- a duly-enacted law passed by the elected representatives years before the same sex marriage case.
As for the Catholic adoption agency in Massachusetts, that had nothing to do with right to gay marriage. It involved the application of a 1989 antidiscrimination law, obviously passed long before gay marriage became legal. The Catholic bishop did not object to the enforcement of that law until after gay marriage was passed. Leaders of the agency actually resigned in protest over the actions of the bishop.
The United Methodist camp was not run by a church and the facility at issue was not a church or sanctuary. It was an open-air pavilion on the board walk that was open to the public. Moreover, the tax exemption was a STATE tax exemption created in 1989 to provide incentives to private landowners to open their private land to the public. It was not the federal tax exemption that was lost. The lesbian couple wanted to have their civil union, which is what is legal in NJ, performed there -- not a gay marriage.
The photography case from New Mexico is on appeal. And, it was a commitment ceremony, not a marriage or even a civil union ceremony.
All these cases are based on laws that were passed before same sex marriage was officially recognized and involve discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation, not on whether or not the gay relationships involved are officially recognized by the state or not. For an interesting discussion of the actual cases and law, as opposed to alarmist distortion, here's a blog post by a law professor from the Univ. oF Minnesota law school. http://volokh.com/posts/1213748649.shtml#contact
For all of you who are opposed to divorce, or sex outside marriage, or abortion, has your marriage suffered because the state is willing to give marriage licenses to those who have previously been divorced, those who've had sex outside marriage, and those who've had an abortion?
Posted by: Christian Lawyer at March 9, 2009
"Christian Lawyer" wrote, "For all of you who are opposed to divorce, or sex outside marriage, or abortion, has your marriage suffered because the state is willing to give marriage licenses to those who have previously [done any of these]?
The blindness of the law to sexual transgressions that were once wisely codified as criminal acts has indeed caused many marriages to suffer. With the “sexual revolution” insinuated into family law, the man who cheats on his wife with another woman -- or with another man -- knows that his moral turpitude can never be a legal factor in his "fitness" for custody of his children.
I have a despicable relative who left his wife for a wealthy woman. He sponges off her and has no desire to work, but only his income matters in the “joint custody” equation. So the mother is forced to pay him while her young children spend half their lives under the “shacked up” roof of his girlfriend.
Just because the "sexual revolution" has cheapened marriage does not mean we should now abandon it to the lowest bidder. Having yielded to the banishment of the Seventh Commandment from the law, shall we now completely surrender to the blasphemous institution of “same sex marriage?”
Secularism is hell-bent on becoming our state church, and the worst “sin” in its unholy writ is “homophobia.” Under the new state church, all “sins” become “crimes,” and the teachings of competing religions about sexual morality shall become punishable as “hate speech.”
hthalljr'gmail'com
Posted by: Tracy Hall Jr at March 9, 2009
Did Christian Lawyer forget to preface "Anti-" before his/her blog identity in the above comment?
Posted by: Thomas Maupin, Esq at March 9, 2009
We heard all this stuff in the Fifties about "integration." Can't conservative Christians ever come up with some new anti-civil rights stuff?
"They" are really oppressing "us"..."they" are the violent ones..."They" want special rights...activist liberal judges hate democracy..."they" chose to be unnatural..."they" are diseased...the Bible say God wants segregation: God says it, I believe it..."they" lead immoral lives..."they" are cursed by God..."they" cannot be "good" people..."they" don't really want "tolerance," but demand acceptance..."they" aren't fully human..."they" will make God punish America..."they" are eroding our rights..."They" are all part of an evil conspiracy..."they" are all alike...about the only things I haven't heard again are: "they" take orders from Moscow..."they are naturally lazy..."they" have lower IQ's..."they" are being manipulated by godless liberals. It's apparently presumed that Gay people are godless liberals, I guess...and gay people are accused of being deviously intelligent.
People who disruptively trespass and vandalize are criminals and should be treated as such. No excuses. Charge them and throw them in jail.
And no excuses, either, that hate crimes committed by people with "orientation bias" were up in 2007, unlike other hate crimes, and probably 2008 as well. Where is CT's coverage of that? Crimes against GLBT people are more characterized by personal assault than with any other category of hate crime.
But, if the American Family Association can boycott everything that even slightly offends their easily bruised, ever so delicate and excessively sensitive sensibilities, with few criticisms from "moderate" conservative Christians that I can remember (but I may well be biased), I don't know why conservatives suddenly think that AFA style tactics are wrong when they're used against people who willfully tried to abolish an established civil right by a bare majority vote.
Posted by: Gregory Peterson at March 10, 2009
To Tracy Hall Jr. -- your examples only prove my point. The state does not refuse a marriage license to, and businesses don't refuse to serve, all the folks in the screwed up marriages you describe. That's all we're talking about as a legal matter. And, if you really want be consistent and make adultery and divorce illegal, the Taliban has a Committee for the Prevention of Vice and the Protection of Virtue that might want you as a member.
To Thomas Maupin, "Esq." -- I must have missed the "Name-Calling as a Substitute for Legal Analysis" class in law school.
Posted by: Christian Lawyer at March 10, 2009
Is this type of hate really what defines Christianity? No wonder so many Americans are getting turned off by organized religion, and are leaving their churches. Just like with Muslims, Christians have also let the extremists of their religion run amuck, and have created a much nastier and hateful world! True Christians need to take their religion back - it's no longer being used for it's intended purpose.
Posted by: John at March 11, 2009
"I still would prefer to not see government in the business of marriage..."
What planet do you live on? The government is the authority on marriage, and without their permission, your "marriage" in the church without their license is meaningless.
It's amazing how you fundies pretend to be the authority on this stuff. Not only do you ignore reality, you then dismiss the other religious folks who disagree with you and are fine with same sex marriage.
Posted by: K at April 16, 2009
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