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Where to begin? I guess let's address them one at a time. The Federal Marriage Amendment didn't get out of the U.S. House of Representatives when the Republicans controlled the Presidency, the House and the Senate majority in July 2006 and popular support was below 50%. Why would anyone expect a measure to divorce the estimated 100,000 same-sex married couple in the country to be more successful in 2013? It takes a vote of 2/3rds of BOTH Houses of the Legislature and then ratification of 3/4 of the states to be enacted. In 220 years the document has been Amended 27 times, and 10 of those happened within the first 5 years. A federal marriage amendment is not going to happen!
By a referendum, all passage of the measure would do is take back the laws of California to the way they were prior to July 14, 2011. LGBT people and the disability community would not be required to be included in instructional materials. Previously the law mandated the teaching of many other groups, mainly racial and ethnic minorities and Equality California and Mark Leno sponsored legislation to add LGBT and people with disabilities to the list (and change American Indian to Native American and Asian Pacific to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders).Referendum to Overturn Non-Discrimination Requirements for School Instruction.Summary Date: 07/25/11 | Circulation Deadline: 10/12/11 | Signatures Required: 504,760Proponent: Paulo E. Sibaja (909) 996-9391If signed by the required number of registered voters and filed with the Secretary of State, this petition will place on the statewide ballot a challenge to a state law previously approved by the Legislature and Governor. The law must then be approved by a majority of voters at the next statewide election to go into effect. The law would require school instructional materials to recognize societal contributions of various groups; and would prohibit school instructional materials that reflect adversely on persons based on their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and other characteristics. (11-0023.) (Full Text)
Attorneys for Prop. 8 filed their appeal this afternoon before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the same court that is hearing an appeal of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling last August that the law unconstitutionally violated the civil rights of gays and lesbians.It should be interesting to see which case they lose first, the Perry v Schwarzenegger lawsuit (the appeal of Judge Ware's ruling) or the Perry v Brown lawsuit (the appeal of Judge Walker's ruling). I expect they will lose them both.
Earlier this year, Prop. 8 sponsors had asked Ware, Walker’s replacement as chief justice, to throw out Walker’s ruling because of an interview he did with reporters in April, after his retirement, during which he discussed his long-term relationship with a gay man. They argued that Walker should have disclosed the relationship and whether he intended to marry before last year’s trial.
Attorneys for the same-sex couples who sued over Prop. 8 argued at the time that the motion was “frivolous” and “offensive.”
Ware denied the motion, saying there was no federal precedent for disqualifying a judge solely because he shares a characteristic, such as sexual orientation, with a litigant.
"I believe homosexuality is a sin because I'm a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it's a sin," he said. "But I know that some people make that choice. That's their choice."
Cain was asked: "So you believe it's a choice?"
"I believe it is a choice," he responded.I wonder if Mr. Cain believes in the Golden Rule?
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| Rick Perry, Republican Governor of Texas |
As a nation, we must come together and call upon Jesus to guide us through unprecedented struggles, and thank Him for the blessings of freedom we so richly enjoy.Some problems are beyond our power to solve, and according to the Book of Joel, Chapter 2, this historic hour demands a historic response. Therefore, on August 6, thousands will gather to pray for a historic breakthrough for our country and a renewed sense of moral purpose.
I sincerely hope you’ll join me in Houston on August 6th and take your place in Reliant Stadium with praying people asking God’s forgiveness, wisdom and provision for our state and nation. There is hope for America. It lies in heaven, and we will find it on our knees.
WHEREAS, throughout our history, both as a state and as individuals, Texans have been strengthened, assured and lifted up through prayer; it seems right and fitting that the people of Texas should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this devastating drought and these dangerous wildfires;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, RICK PERRY, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas. I urge Texans of all faiths and traditions to offer prayers on that day for the healing of our land, the rebuilding of our communities and the restoration of our normal and robust way of life.
Would you vote yes or no on a ballot initiative that would legalize civil marriage for same-sex couples, on the condition that clergy or religious institutions are never required to perform a marriage that goes against their religious beliefs?Binder calls this an increase in support because the 47% number is higher than the 45% baseline support for the marriage equality question. However, the question "Would you vote yes or no on a ballot initiative that would legalize civil marriage for same-sex couples" was not included in the poll. The assumption is that the results of this question would track identically with the results on the marriage equality question.
47% Yes 43% No 10% Undecided
Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota?So, with wording eerily similar to 2008's Proposition 8, in 2012 a NO vote would be needed to preserve the possibility of marriage equality in Minnesota, although marriage equality would be banned by statute in the status quo. A yes vote would insert the language into the constitution and would require another amendment to be passed by voters to repeal it and enact marriage equality.
It will be interesting to see how the ides that believe in progressive values of fairness and equality for all will respond to this onslaught on those value.The campaign, which largely targets states where Republicans won control of legislatures or governorships, has garnered the support of Republican political superstars such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.), Sens. Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), and Rep. Trent Franks (Ariz.). The groups intend to pass anti-gay marriage amendments, curtail abortion rights and, in at least one case, ban “transgender bathrooms.”Family policy councils — a creation of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family in the 1980s — have launched the Ignite plan in 15 states. Each family policy council has a three-prong plan to achieve their legislative goals over the next two years: lobbying for legislation, mobilizing pastors and social conservatives and supporting candidates that have backed their initiatives. Each group has used a stock brochure containing nearly identical wording to explain their plan and to solicit funds. In many cases, an Ignite plan was launched with an anonymous matching-grant donor.[...]In several states — such as Indiana, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and West Virginia — Ignite plans seems to be targeted at getting anti-gay marriage amendments passed.
Many of our nation's civil, human and women's rights laws might never have passed if they were put to a vote. Instead, those advances usually came through legislative and court decisions that valued human rights more than special-interest politics.
You should probably go ahead and read the whole thing and if you live in Minnesota, contact your state legislators and tell them to vote NO on the proposed constitutional amendment.Minnesota already has the curiously named Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibits same-sex couples from marrying. That's the status quo in many other states as well, although there's no evidence that heterosexual marriages need to be "defended'' from gay and lesbian unions.Loving relationships between two men or two women have absolutely no impact on other matrimonial commitments. Nor do they pose any threat to the institution of marriage or family life, as the amendment backers claim.And yet opponents of marriage equity say a constitutional amendment is a necessary backstop that would prevent the courts from overturning existing law.In reality, enshrining this form of bigotry in the state's premier governing document would be a step backward. Rather than reinforce an already discriminatory law, core values of equity and fairness should compel Minnesotans to repeal DOMA and extend marriage equity to all.We understand that emotions on this issue run deep. The debate hits numerous religious and moral hot buttons, for secular and sacred reasons. Concurrent with their beliefs, religious organizations may indeed decide who they will marry with their blessings.However, government is not and should not be a church, synagogue or mosque. Marriage under the law is a next-of-kin, legal arrangement that includes important property, benefits, child custody and health care rights. Those legal rights should be available to all couples.
"I look at it as: We are all equal," said the first year representative from Cottage Grove.Let's hope there are more fair-minded Republicans like Rep. Kriesel in the Minnesota Legislature."It is not right. I can't do it. I'm very upset about this vote. I don't like it. I think it sends the wrong message. You live once in your life and I've learned that the hard way," said the military veteran, who lost his legs while serving in IraqAfghanistan. "You never know when it is going to be your time. People fight to find happiness....You find someone you love and now other people are saying because I don't consider that normal, you can't do it?""It's just wrong," Kriesel said. "There is not anything that can move me on this."He may be only Republican lawmaker to oppose the amendment. He said he is "working hard" to bring other colleagues along.
Freedom To Marry:The Marriage Equality Rhode Island (MERI) board of directors issued a statement expressing staunch opposition to civil unions now being supported by Speaker Gordon Fox and restated their support for full marriage equality for same-sex couples in Rhode Island.“Civil unions are unacceptable because they marginalize gay and lesbian couples in very significant ways. The General Assembly will essentially be legalizing a two-class system that subjects thousands of Rhode Island same-sex couples to discrimination. We cannot support legislation that establishes a second class of citizens in Rhode Island,” said Martha Holt, chair of MERI’s board of directors.
Although I am a strong supporter of marriage equality, I disagree with MERI and Freedom To Marry here and support Gordon Fox's actions. I believe it is better to enact legislatively what you can right now to protect same-sex couples and their families, while at the same time acknowledging that you are interested in passing marriage equality in the future. Just recently, Hawaii and Illinois have done exactly that earlier this year, with Colorado coming one vote short of joining them in enacting civil unions. In Maryland, marriage equality advocates refused to support a civil unions bill and were rewarded with passage of a bill in one legislative house and bitter recriminations. New York is also only going for marriage equality. Interestingly, in New York and Maryland if you are married someplace else those states will recognize those unions under state law, so maybe the pressure is off for same-sex couples who really need the protections of marriage.“Rhode Island House Speaker Gordon Fox has made a serious miscalculation. With support for the freedom to marry topping 60 percent—higher than in any other state in the country—and with a strongly supportive governor, the Rhode Island House should send a marriage bill—and nothing less—to the Senate now. Couples who are doing the work of marriage in their day-to-day lives, who have made a commitment in life, deserve to have an equal commitment under the law. That legal commitment is called marriage. Freedom to Marry is prepared to join with Speaker Fox, advocates on the ground, and a super-majority of Rhode Islanders to make the strongest case to the Senate.“Civil union is a separate and unequal half-step that has proven to be terribly inadequate in practice. That’s why every New England state that started with civil union—Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont—has moved to marriage. It is also why the official New Jersey Civil Union Review Commission found that “the separate categorization established by the Civil Union Act invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children.
I also support Speaker Fox's actions.Fox, in an emotional appeal to gay marriage advocates protesting outside his State House office, said his decision to support civil-union legislation was a sign of the strong opposition in both the state House of Representatives and the state Senate for gay marriage, and did not mean that he was stepping away from his drive for full-fledged marriage rights.
"I am the Speaker of the House and I am an openly gay man. This is very emotional for me,” he said. “But as speaker, I understand counting votes and what I can deliver for all of us. And I believe I am delivering rights to us today and it’s not killing the cause.”Protester Wendy Becker, of Providence, begged him to put gay marriage to a vote, saying: “We need to let people do the right thing.”Fox replied: “I understand that. This is the right thing for now. We’ll keep working.”His move won support from both Governor Chafee, a strong advocate of same-sex marriage, and Senate President M. Teresa Paiva Weed, an opponent, but it was lambasted by the lead sponsor of the abandoned same-sex marriage bill, the protesters outside Fox’s State House office, and a phalanx of advocacy groups, including Marriage Equality Rhode Island.As a same-sex marriage advocate, Chafee said he “had hoped that legislation enacting it would have reached my desk this year,” but he respects Fox’s political assessment and believes “passage of civil-union legislation would be a step forward for our state and I would sign such a bill if and when it reaches my desk.”Paiva Weed reiterated her own support for civil unions, and said she believes this approach has “broad support” in the Senate.
Married judges rule on divorce cases all the time. So do single judges. And divorced ones. Their rulings aren't challenged on the grounds of their marital status; that would obviously be ridiculous.
Yet ProtectMarriage, the group that sponsored Proposition 8, is challenging last year's ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker that declared the same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. The group's lawyers argue that because Walker has a longtime male partner, he was unfit to render a decision on Proposition 8. If one day he should want to marry, the argument goes, he might benefit from his own decision, assuming it survives the scrutiny of higher courts.
This claim is absurd on many levels, especially when you remember that ProtectMarriage's case against same-sex marriage is that it threatens the institution of heterosexual marriage. In fact, the group says, that damage gives it the legal status to challenge the initiative, because any married heterosexual is allegedly harmed by same-sex unions. But if that's the case, then by the group's own logic, married heterosexual judges would also be forced to recuse themselves; the integrity of their own marriages could be damaged by the matter before them.
According to this line of argument, former Chief Justice Ronald M. George, a married heterosexual, would not have been able to preside over the California Supreme Court case in which same-sex couples sued to overturn an earlier ban on same-sex marriage. George wrote the majority opinion setting out the reasons why the ban violated the state Constitution.
So then, perhaps, only an unmarried judge who has sworn never to wed could hear cases about same-sex marriage. Or any marriage at all. An African American judge could never hear a race-discrimination case. And no female judge could decide a lawsuit on gender discrimination. Or a male one either.
The guidelines for judicial recusal can be unclear at times, but generally the bar is a high one. The rules call for judges to disqualify themselves when their impartiality might reasonably be questioned, but they are not supposed to back away from cases because of who they are — their ethnicity, gender, marital status, affluence, political leanings or, yes, sexual orientation. It's another matter if they are directly and materially affected, or if they have previously displayed a deep-seated bias on the issue at hand. A judge who drives a gas guzzler can still hear a lawsuit against an oil company, but not if his or her spouse works for the oil company.
Had Walker been one of the activists fighting Proposition 8, or if he had repeatedly sought a marriage license and been rejected, ProtectMarriage would have valid claims of conflict of interest. The group's assertion that a gay judge in a relationship is less able than a heterosexual married judge to render a fair decision on a sexual-orientation case says more about the pervasiveness of discrimination against homosexuals than it does about Walker's fitness to hear the matter.
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| Charles Cooper, lead counsel for "Protect Marriage" (sic) in the Propositiopn 8 federal lawsuit |
"Proponents of Proposition 8 certainly are getting desperate."American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization promoting the lawsuit, also has a response to Cooper's ridiculous motion:
(San Francisco, April 25, 2011) — In reaction to today's filing of a motion
to vacate last year's historic decision by U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn
Walker declaring California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional, Jon Davidson,
Legal Director for Lambda Legal, issued the following statement.
"Proponents of Proposition 8 certainly are getting desperate. This reeks
of a hail-Mary attempt to assail Judge Walker's character because they are
unable to rebut the extremely well-reasoned ruling he issued last year.
It's becoming a sadly typical move of the right: don't like the ruling;
attack the referee."
To say that Judge Walker's should have disclosed his ten-year relationship
with another man or that it made him unfit to rule on Proposition 8 is like
saying that a married heterosexual judge deciding an issue in a divorce
proceeding has to disclose if he or she is having marital problems and
might someday be affected by legal rulings in the case. Or that any judge
who professes any religious faith is unable to rule on any question of
religious liberty or, at a minimum, must disclose what his faith teaches.
Much like a suggestion that a female judge could not preside over a case
involving sexual harassment or an African American judge could not preside
over a case involving race discrimination, Proposition 8's supporters
improperly are suggesting that a judge will rule in favor of any litigant
with whom he shares a personal characteristic.
Judges hold a special and respected place in our society. Every day, they
are called upon to administer justice – in routine contract or traffic
court disputes, gut-wrenching child custody decisions, complex criminal
proceedings, and, as in this case, disputes about the basic human rights
that our Constitution is designed to protect. There may be judges who
betray their responsibilities and act with bias, but such a grave
accusation must be supported by evidence. Simply disagreeing with a
decision is not evidence that it was the result of bias. And assuming that
being in a same-sex relationship renders some judges unable to interpret
the law and do the job they have sworn to do insults both judges and
America's system of justice."
“This motion is yet another in a string of desperate and absurd motions by Prop 8 Proponents who refuse to accept the fact that the freedom to marry is a constitutional right. They’re attempting to keep secret the video of the public trial and they’re attacking the judge because they disagree with his decision. Clearly, the Proponents are grasping at straws because they have no legal case.”National Center for Lesbian Rights attorney Shannon Minter also responded:
"This is a desperate and ill-advised move that underscores their inability to defend Prop 8 on the merits. This is not likely to win them any points with the courts, who understandably do not appreciate having the integrity of judges called into question based on such outrageous grounds. This is part and parcel of the underhanded way the Prop 8 campaign itself was run-based on lies, insinuations, and unsupported innuendo."
In response to his firm's decision to refuse to sign on to a legal defense which per force requires them to argue that discrimination against same-sex couples is constitutional, Paul Clement (who was reportedly paid $5 million a year by King & Spalding) resigned from the firm and joined another:Today the firm filed a motion to withdraw from its engagement to represent the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives on the constitutional issues regarding Section III of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. Last week we worked diligently through the process required for withdrawal.In reviewing this assignment further, I determined that the process used for vetting this engagement was inadequate. Ultimately I am responsible for any mistakes that occurred and apologize for the challenges this may have created.
"I resign out of the firmly held belief that a representation should not be abandoned because the client's legal position is extremely unpopular in certain quarters. Defending unpopular clients is what lawyers do," Clement wrote to King & Spalding chairman Robert Hays. "I recognized from the outset that this statute implicates very sensitive issues that prompt strong views on both sides. But having undertaken the representation, I believe there is no honorable course for me but to complete it."
Clement said he will join Bancroft PLLC, a small Washington-based firm that is home to former Bush Justice Department official Viet Dinh.The full text of Clement's resignation letter is also available. This is probably good news for the likelihood of DOMA not surviving judicial review since Clement will be forced to defend the discriminatory law without drawing upon the resources of a huge law firm like King & Spalding.
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