Who really defends the Constitution?

Following upon on Chris Christie's veto of marriage equality in New Jersey, and the remarkable idea in contravention to the Constitution that a minority should have its rights voted on by the majority: Andrew Sullivan points out how the minority opposed to marriage equality keeps changing the rules, and can't even manage to be consistent in their "pro-Constitution" views. (My emphasis)

They moved the goalposts on us. When we actually began to win in state legislatures, such as California (twice!), or New Hampshire, or now Maryland and New Jersey and Washington State, that process became suddenly unacceptable - and undemocratic! - as well. Even on an issue many hold to be a core civil right, we were told the courts were irrelevant and now that the legislatures were irrelevant. This was particularly odd coming from conservatives who at one point in time were strong believers in restraints on majority tyranny. But this is what a legislative debate can do that no referendum can, and it's why the founders established a republic not a pure democracy:

...But the way in which a tiny 2- 3 percent minority seeking basic civil equality has been forced now to be subject to state referendums, even after winning legislative victories, strikes me as revealing. It's basically an attack on representative government, a resort to the forms of decision-making which maximize the potential for anonymous bigotry and minimize the importance of representative government, a core achievement of Anglo-American democracy, that can help enhance reason of the accountable against the sometimes raw prejudice of the majority.

Christie is a man whose candor I admire in many ways. But this was an act of cowardice and unfairness and a misguided disregard for representative democracy. How many other duly enacted laws must now be sent to the referendum process for final judgment. Why have a legislature at all? And this from the party that claims to defend the Constitution.

It's Because the Gays are Getting Married (video Sunday)

Lots of activity in the individual states.

Here's a great summary by AP about all the activity in the states this year over marriage equality.  In brief:

MN and NC citizens will vote on amendments to ban marriage between same sex couples, while

ME will try to get the voters to support marriage in a referendum.

MD , WA and NJ have legislative efforts to legalize marriage between same sex couples, while

NH has a legislative effort to repeal marriage equality

In the judicial sphere, we're still waiting for the next chapter of the Prop8 case. At least 8 DOMA cases are winding their way through the courts.

Same sex marriage is NOT a "new right"

From The Richmond TImes-Dispatch:

[J]udges who recognize the right of gay couples to marry are not creating a "new right." Rather, they are extending a right that is already recognized for all other adults. "Marriage" is legal for all adults, except those who are gay or lesbian. To recognize that being gay or lesbian is no impediment to marriage is no more creating a "new right" than to say that 18-year-old adult citizens of Mississippi should be able to marry today rather than wait three years. There may be compelling arguments, on policy grounds, to continue to prohibit gay marriage. Seven states, the District of Columbia, Canada, several European countries, and South Africa (among other governments) have rejected those arguments, if they exist. But one argument that does not stand up to scrutiny is that same-sex marriage is a "judge-created right."

What Prop8 Really Cost Us

GREAT blog from the HuffPo, by a gay dad about his family and their experience of Prop8.  Only difference with my family is that our kids were old enough to be angry.

Prop 8 passed that November. Elizabeth's second-grade class had been following the presidential election, so she knew about percentages and majorities. What she was unable to wrap her mind around was the fact that over half the voters in California thought we had no legal right to be a family. 

It was months before she told me about the nightmares she'd been having, dreams of people with yellow signs coming to our house with torches, trying set fire to our home. I wish I were making this up. Sadly, no. Thanks, National Organization for Marriage. To you I would say this: if, as your misleading campaign ads bleated for months, you main goal is to protect children, how could you possibly do this to mine? 

We got married that very warm, first possible evening in June, not to be part of history or to make some political statement, but because we're a family and want what's best for our kids. Luckily, California's Supreme Court subsequently held that our marriage, and the other 18,000 marriages performed during those five months, had been entered into in good faith and could not be evaporated by a vote. But what about the other families, the ones who weren't lucky enough to marry when they had the chance? 

Even with Tuesday's court ruling finding Prop 8 unconstitutional, with the inevitable stays and delays as the case likely works its way to the Supreme Court, for months and probably years we'll have California kids standing on playgrounds wondering why they can't have married parents like their friends.

Perhaps Ms Gallagher would like to explain that?

Voices of Faith Speak Out: a conservative proposal

I like what the (Episcopal) Bishop of Washington (state) said:

What [LGBT people] ask of us, the church and the government, is to put boundaries around their relationship, to hold them in the same regard and with the same respect, which would also mean that we expect the same from them.  They are not asking for special treatment.  They are asking for equal treatment.   They are asking to be accountable, as a couple, in community.  To me, this is a conservative proposal.  I am for it, and I hope we will finally make way for this to happen, not only in our society, but also in our church.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

To new couples and to old ones, to those married, waiting to marry, wanting to marry, or just starting to think about it, for all those who know that the best relationships are worth all the effort, that love does indeed conquer all,  and most especially to my beloved wife whose presence blesses me every day,

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

Dissecting the Dissent in Prop8 case

Dahlia Lithwick, writing in Slate describes the weakness of the arguments supporting Prop8, and the floppy dissenting opinion by Judge Smith

The evidence, the data, and the experts overwhelming agree that gay marriage does not harm children. And that leaves opponents of gay marriage to argue a tautology: Gay marriage is wrong because it’s wrong.....

That’s the best case that can be made against gay marriage. An appeals court dissent that rests on the premise that states needn’t act rationally, or offer evidence of rationality, or even be rational in creating classifications, so long as someone publishes a study and someone else believes it. That’s the best they’ve got, it seems.

That is not legal argument or empirical evidence. It is the death rattle of a movement that has no legal argument or empirical evidence. Nobody disputes the fact that Americans opposed to gay marriage believe passionately in their ideas and arguments. But that doesn’t necessarily mean those arguments should win in a court. The best thing that could have happened in the Prop 8 case just happened. The dissent has no clothes.

Video fr Washington debate:outstanding!

Time to retire the assumption that religious people oppose equality

From the HuffPo:

[A] new exploration of 2011 polling by Public Religion Research Institute offers decisive evidence that the old assumptions about battle lines between secular proponents and religious foes no longer hold. Majorities of five major religious groups and the religiously unaffiliated favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, compared to three major religious groups who oppose same-sex marriage. On the side supporting same-sex marriage.... these religious groups make up approximately 45 percent of the general population.

On the other hand, large majorities of white evangelical Protestants (75 percent), Mormons (75 percent) and black Protestants (63 percent) continue to oppose same-sex marriage. .... Together, these groups comprise approximately 32 percent of the general population.

Within these opposition groups, however, a generational gap signals that with the passage of time, this intense resistance may ebb....

The quirks of specific constituencies and cultures may drive individual statewide legislative and ballot initiative battles this year. But the prominent testimonies of religious elected officials, alongside the perspectives from the people in the pews, certainly demand that the media retire the archaic assumption that religious people oppose same-sex marriage.

The Messed up Mind of Maggie Gallagher

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is a shady group that operates as a front for big money opposed to marriage equality. They have deep links to the conservative wing of the Roman Catholic church (e.g., here and here). Yes, the irony abounds given the majority of Catholics are supportive of marriage equality.

As we make steady progress towards equality, NOM becomes increasingly less about “marriage” and more about demonizing and dehumanizing gay people, telling lies and relying on hysteria and junk science (e.g., here.)

All this as an intro to Salon's illuminating profile about the founder of NOM, Maggie Gallagher.

It seems Maggie Gallagher’s obsession with marriage comes from the fact that she bore a child out of wedlock when at Yale, and the father refused to marry her. In a classic example of transference, she has become a primary culture warrior against gay equality. To her gay people marrying is THE cause of family failure: not divorce, not casual sex, not quickie marriages without counseling, not high rates of childbearing out of wedlock, not a crisis in poor communities. It’s the audacity of gay couples asserting a right to be together.

Barely half of the people in the US are married. Those with education are much more likely to be married . Indeed, those awful blue state liberals turn out to be the real social conservatives, with a high rate of marriage and low rates of unmarried parenting (e.g., here ). But the biggest threat to marriage is arguably the economy, as marriage rates collapse in the economically disadvantaged.

Nevermind all this. Maggie Gallagher blames “Teh Gay”. And regardless of facts or experience, she will continue to oppose our marriages because it's all our fault that there are children out of wedlock.

In her forthcoming book, she writes that “including same-sex unions in the legal category of ‘marriage’ will necessarily change the public meaning of marriage for the entire society in ways that must make it harder for marriage to perform its core civil functions over time.” How do we know? We just do.

And even if somehow the evidence showed, conclusively, that same-sex marriage were good for children? Gallagher would still be dissatisfied: “Nothing could make me call a same-sex couple a marriage, because that’s not what I believe a marriage is.” (Salon)

THe illogic of this is so noticeable, the author stresses it again.

She is asserting what to her is a timeless social fact: that institutions and norms are delicate, and that if you mess with them — say, by expanding the definition of marriage — bad things are likely to happen.

There is an obvious problem with this sort of argumentation: it is not really susceptible to evidence. Gallagher is unwilling to make any predictions of what doom will befall families after the legalization of same-sex marriage. She just has faith that marriage, the central institution of good child-rearing, will be weakened if same-sex couples are allowed its prestige and protections.(Salon)

Over at Andrew Sullivan’s blog, Patrick Appel comments about this unwillingness to be moved by evidence

Gallagher's declaration that her mind cannot be changed is the statement of a fundamentalist. There is no greater sin against open debate than to preemptively seal oneself off from evidence.

He goes on,

Before gay marriage was legal anywhere, arguments for or a gainst it were mostly based on first principles and theoretical conjectures. Now that there are real-world examples of same-sex marriages, evidence-based arguments for or against equality are possible. Opponents of equality retreat to first-principles arguments because the facts are increasingly stacked against them.

Political opinions are not science, but they can be informed by science. Gallagher's fact-resistant opinion has almost nothing to do with gays themselves. Her opposition is rooted in theology and was likely reinforced by personal longings for a nuclear family.

So, conservative Roman Catholic, carrying around a huge level of guilt for her own perceived failure, and transfers all of that onto gay couples. Apparently, outside of this issue, she can be a warm person, but it's as though she has this blind spot that she so casually dehumanizes us and our relationships. (Interestingly, her son does not agree with her--he's in theatre, and must have many gay friends who are being deeply injured by his mother's activism.) She really has an almost unnatural ability to view us as deeply "other" so that she hurts us and doesn't really care or notice that it's real people she's hurting!

At one point, breaking from my script of questions, I interrupted her to ask if, despite all of her fears about same-sex marriage, she didn’t find it heartwarming to see those pictures of joyous gay couples in Massachusetts or Iowa or California, crying and hugging as they celebrated their marriages. Before answering, she takes a long pause, the only long pause of our conversation. “Am I happy for them?” she finally says. “That’s a tough question. I like to see people happy. It’s better than seeing people sad. So yes, I am happy for them. But I am sad. But I am not sad because they are happy.” (Salon)

Maggie Gallagher opposes marriage of gay people because she thinks children should be raised by a man and a woman. And even though marriage is not required for procreation, even though procreation is not required in marriage, even though the fight for marriage equality says nothing about raising children, even though denying us marriage in California has, as the recent decision points out, absolutely no effect on child-rearing in a legal sense, even though all this:
Maggie Gallagher opposes letting two men marry because one man walked out on her.

Commenters, please dive in

Hi guys, looks like we have some new visitors, who are upset by us gays getting married, on a month-old post about the RC Bishops effort to derail marriage in Washington. Please feel free to dive in to the conversation and I hope they will manage to as well. I'm letting it go on for now because you never know who is lurking and might learn something or even have an epiphany! but if it gets out of hand I will close down the comments and delete any that are inappropriate.

What about the Prop8 tapes?

Last week, the 9th circuit court decided that the PRop8 trial video tapes should remain sequestered from the public, on the grounds that the judge had promised they would, and people should be able to trust the word of the judiciary.

I think that was the right decision. Yes, the tapes SHOULD be public, and while I believe that the initial decision to keep them under wraps was wrong, once that decision was made, I don't think the court had a choice but to enforce it.

What the decision made clear, however, was that the court didn't by the defendant's claims of being fearful or threatened as justification to keep the tapes secret. The finding was very narrow, on the value of the judicial promise.

Incidentally, while they remain under seal for now, they may well be released in 2020, 10 years after the trial.

Washington State House approves marriage equality; the governor will sign

Yay, Washington! 

 The state House of Representatives, after two hours of intense debate, voted 55-43 on Wednesday to make Washington the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.  

 The legislation passed the State Senate last week, and goes to Gov. Chris Gregoire who has promised to sign it into law. Opponents have vowed to collect 120,577 valid voter signatures required to force a referendum in this November’s general election.

Equal protection

Some things to remember:  the Constitution protects the rights of minorities.  That is why we cannot vote to outlaw inter-racial marriage, to segregate schools, to prevent Mormons from marrying, or to forbid Jews to own property.  And what the courts have said is that gay people have those same rights.

Americans overall are equally split on whether same sex couples should marry.  Ironically, a strong majority of Roman Catholics approve of marriage. (data here)

And just remember, in 1968, after laws against inter-racial marriage were overturned, over 70% of Americans DISAGREED.    Imagine the outcome if they had voted on it?

Why is it that Conservatives who so favor the Constitution, forget all about it when it comes to equal protection? It doesn't say, equal protection only for straight white Christian men.

Updated graphical timeline

Always available on its own page.

From the decision

It's 2-1.  THe opinion is narrow, applying specifically to the unusual situation in CA where a right was given and then taken away. This probably makes it a sturdier decision. From the opinion (my emphases)

….all parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only.  It stripped same sex couples of the ability they previously possessed to obtain from the State, or any other authorized party, an important right--the right to obtain and use the designation of 'marriage to describe their relationships.  Nothing more, nothing less.  Proposition 8 therefor could not have been enacted to advance California's interests in childbearing or  responsible procreation, for it had no effect on the rights of same sex couples to raise children oron the procreative practices of other couples.  Nor did Proposition 8 have any effect on religious freedom or on parents' rights ot control their education: it could not have been enacted to safeguard these liberties.

All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation of 'marriage' which symbolizes state legitimization and societal recognition of their committted relationships.  Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite sex couples  The Constitution simply does not allow for "laws of this sort" (Romer v. Evans.)

Prop8 ruled Unconstitutional

By 2-1. I won't be able to comment much till tonight, so meanwhile here's how to keep up.

• Prop8 Trial Tracker is always a good source.
• AFER sponsored the lawsuit .  They will have a press conference at 10.30 PST.  
• Follow #prop8 on twitter.
• Background from Chris Geidner.
• Three possible outcomes (From SFgate)

Regardless of the decision, it is very unlikely anything will change on the ground as the stay will probably remain until the next level of appeal--either to the en banc 9th, or to SCOTUS.   The more narrowly they write the decision (e.g., focusing specifically on the unusal situation in CA where a right was given and then taken away), the more likely some think that the Supreme Court will not hear it and that equality will come back to CA.

Remember, though, none of this will make a difference unless we repeal DOMA.

Prop8 appeals court decision due TOMORROW

At 10am Tuesday, the 9th circuit court will release its decision on the Prop8 case. Check out my graphical timeline for all the ups and downs in this saga.

One town's war on gay teens

Rolling Stone has a searing article about the rate of suicides in the Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota (Michelle Bachman's district). It is a must read, as it shows how a culture grew up in which teachers were not allowed to make any positive references to gay people, and literally looked the other way as gay kids were bullied mercilessly. At the same time, the local right wingers explained the spate of gay suicides as having nothing to do with bullying, and entirely reflecting the "unhealthiness" of being gay.

 This is an utter failure of institutions that should put a child's welfare first. It's a shameful example of the bigotry, ignorance and hatred against which we must continue to fight--and a shameful example of how so-called "Christians" can be anything but.  Here's a selection (my emphases) but you should definitely read the whole thing 

 Yet while everyone in the district was buzzing about the neutrality policy, the board simply refused to discuss it, not even when students began appearing before them to detail their experiences with LGBT harassment. "The board stated quite clearly that they were standing behind that policy and were not willing to take another look," recalls board member Wenzel. Further insulating itself from reality, the district launched an investigation into the suicides and unsurprisingly, absolved itself of any responsibility. "Based on all the information we've been able to gather," read a statement from the superintendent's office, "none of the suicides were connected to incidents of bullying or harassment."  

 Just to be on the safe side, however, the district held PowerPoint presentations in a handful of schools to train teachers how to defend gay students from harassment while also remaining neutral on homosexuality. One slide instructed teachers that if they hear gay slurs – say, the word "fag" – the best response is a tepid "That language is unacceptable in this school." ("If a more authoritative response is needed," the slide added, the teacher could continue with the stilted, almost apologetic explanation, "In this school we are required to welcome all people and to make them feel safe.") But teachers were, of course, reminded to never show "personal support for GLBT people" in the classroom.