by VorJack
As Daniel already mentioned, California’s Proposition 8 was struck down as unconstitutional. Federal District court Judge Vaughn R. Walker produced a 136 page verdict which is available online.
John Pieret over at Thoughts in a Haystack is reading through it, and he picked up on this section on page 9 of the pdf:
At oral argument on proponents’ motion for summary judgment, the court posed to proponents’ counsel the assumption that “the state’s interest in marriage is procreative” and inquired how permitting same-sex marriage impairs or adversely affects that interest. Counsel replied that the inquiry was “not the legally relevant question,” but when pressed for an answer, counsel replied: “Your honor, my answer is: I don’t know. I don’t know.”
Despite this response, proponents in their trial brief promised to “demonstrate that redefining marriage to encompass same-sex relationships” would effect some twenty-three specific harmful consequences. At trial, however, proponents presented only one witness, David Blankenhorn, to address the government interest in marriage. Blankenhorn’s testimony is addressed at length hereafter; suffice it to say that he provided no credible evidence to support any of the claimed adverse effects proponents promised to demonstrate. During closing arguments, proponents again focused on the contention that “responsible procreation is really at the heart of society’s interest in regulating marriage.” When asked to identify the evidence at trial that supported this contention, proponents’ counsel replied, “you don’t have to have evidence of this point.”
It really seems like the proponents of Prop. 8 were phoning this one in. I’m wondering if we’ll finally see their A game when it goes to the Supreme Court. Blankenhorn particularly doesn’t seem to have put much rigor into his testimony, and the Judge seemed unimpressed.
Blankenhorn gave absolutely no explanation why manifestations of the deinstitutionalization of marriage would be exacerbated (and not, for example, ameliorated) by the presence of marriage for same-sex couples. His opinion lacks reliability, as there is simply too great an analytical gap between the data and the opinion Blankenhorn proffered. [...]
Blankenhorn was unwilling to answer many questions directly on cross-examination and was defensive in his answers. Moreover, much of his testimony contradicted his opinions. [...]
Blankenhorn stated he opposes marriage for same-sex couples because it will weaken the institution of marriage, despite his recognition that at least thirteen positive consequences would flow from state recognition of marriage for same-sex couples, including: (1) by increasing the number of married couples who might be interested in adoption and foster care, same-sex marriage might well lead to fewer children growing up in state institutions and more children growing up in loving adoptive and foster families; and (2) same-sex marriage would signify greater social acceptance of homosexual love and the worth and validity of samesex intimate relationships. [...] (p. 48-49)
And finally:
Blankenhorn’s opinions are not supported by reliable evidence or methodology and Blankenhorn failed to consider evidence contrary to his view in presenting his testimony. The court therefore finds the opinions of Blankenhorn to be unreliable and entitled to essentially no weight. (p. 49)
The proponents are already accusing Judge Walker of bias. It’s a telling argument, because I suspect it means they have no direct response to his verdict. One way or another, they have to step it up a bit before they get to the Supreme Court, or else Louis CK’s prediction will turn out to be accurate:
Wow. So I would have expected the actual backers of prop 8 to be this clueless about the law, but I didn’t actually think their lawyers would be.
The poor guys are stuck. They know that they have zero deviance to support an objection to gay marriage other then their magic book say invisible sky daddy don’t like it. And while they will be happy to change it, the US is still a country where “the buybull say so” is not admissible in court which mean they are forced to resort to hand waving and fancy dances to disguise the fact that this is the only argument they have.
NPR said yesterday that Judge Walker is also an open homosexual. My wonder is how did they not figure that harm their case?
The problem is that proponents of prop 8 are full of anger and hatred and really lack documented proof of their beliefs. It’s all based on their moral feelings or their religious beliefs, which has no standing when it comes to adjudication.
“Open” is a stretch. There is much speculation that he is gay, but he has never confirmed it that I know of.
For the record, before this decision, Judge Walker was considered by many to be strongly conservative. He was originally nominated by Reagan. His appointment was blocked in the Judiciary committee in part because of Democratic concerns about his representation of the US Olympic Committe against a group that had been using the title “Gay Olymics.” He was also accused of belonging to a men’s only club that discriminated against minorities.
Ultimately he was renominated and confirmed during GWH Bush’s administration. He’s a Chicago school “law and economics” guy. He has strayed from the conservative play book a bit over the years though. I believe he once advocated for drug legalization
My guess is that proponents of Prop 8 saw him as a decent judge to oversee this case until they read his decision this week.
He has strayed from the conservative play book a bit over the years though. I believe he once advocated for drug legalization.
Ideologically speaking, drug legalization is a more natural fit for conservative thought than modern liberal thought. In reality, though, everyone’s afraid of the soccer mom.
“Ideologically speaking, drug legalization is a more natural fit for conservative thought than modern liberal thought.”
If by conservative you mean Goldwater style conservative, I may agree. “conservative” has taken on a different meaning over the last 30 years or so though. I think opposition to drug legalization is – and strong support for suppression of drug use – is a plank in the modern “conservative” platform.
One can make an easy Burkean case for drug legalization, with looser ones like Andrew Sullivan already there and even stalwarts like George Will have been edging closer to this position. William F. Buckley was also famously in favor of drug legalization.
The problem is that communitarian populism (soccer moms, in short) have taken over both parties’ social policy wing. I loathe them even more than religious social conservatives, if that were possible.
I hear you – and this is an interesting debate – but I stand by my statement that modern conservatism (say post Nixon) is strongly anti legalization. Perhaps “modern popular conservatism” would be a better name.
I generally agree on the soccer mom point, but on this issue I think it goes deeper than that. The “war on drugs” has been driven by other groups (including religious conservatives) and at this point has become an industry unto itself.
Nixon was the jerk who did it, too. He, by most measures, was more liberal than Clinton, so there’s that.
Yeah, I agree that since its establishment, it is now driven as much by the prison-industrial complex and law enforcement interests as it is by the average scared-out-of-their-wits suburban parents. And many of those interests, while I wouldn’t call them conservative exactly, are definitely Republican.
Republican as opposed to conservative is probably a fair distinction. Although I’m guessing the repubs responsible would self identify as conservative.
Not that it should mater whether the judge was gay or not but it seem that the rumors are being spread by groups like the National Organization for Marriage and American Family Association known for their slimy ways. As far as I can see it’s all rumors and innuendos used by people who know they can’t attack the decision on the merits so they try to muddy the water in hope that it will help disguise how weak their position really is.
The only people who don’t hate gay people are gay people you know.
Whether the judge is gay or not is completely irrelevant. Saying a gay judge can’t oversee the prop 8 case is tantamount to saying that an African American judge can’t oversee a civil rights case; a woman judge can’t oversee an obortion related case; a Christian judge can’t oversee a religious freedom case.
All judges come to the bench with inherent characterostics and beliefs. That does not disqualify them to sit on cases where those characteristics/beliefs are touched on. If it did, almost no judge would ever be qualified to oversee any case.
I really am curious to see what they come up with. What kind of loop-hole will they try and squirm through?
I’m wondering if we’ll finally see their A game when it goes to the Supreme Court.
I don’t see how that can happen. When a case gets appealed up the ladder, new evidence is not introduced. The higher court is merely examining the judgments of the lower court for legal merit.
IANAL.
Their “A Game” is likely a legal argument though – not a factual one. My guess is that they will argue the trial court incorrectly applied a “strict scrutiny” standard to prop 8 rather than a “rational basis” analysis.
They’ve sung the chorus over and over, like a bad rendition of “It’s a Small World”. You’ve already seen their “A Game”. I would be shocked if they can scrape up ANYthing more than what has been repeated (and repeatedly disproven and dismissed) all along.
If the state truly had an interest in responsible procreation, then it would be logical for the state to kick a whole lot of people out of the gene pool. It would be logical to deny marriage to any person incapable of procreation.
And marriages that have no interest in procreating, such as mine, would need to be blocked by the state.
I’m going to pull a Dan Quayle scenario out, a la Murphy Brown‘s supposed disregard for family values by choosing to have a baby without a father present. One contemporary sitcom of that era provided a stable and loving home for three young girls with a widowed father, his brother-in-law, and his other friend. So long as the mother had died and the men weren’t having sex with each other, no one said that was a terrible upbringing for the daughters of Danny Tanner. So what if one of the daughters grew up to be completely absorbed in her Christian faith and another turned to meth, while another split in two, and are just kind of weird and made a lot of money making unsexy twin videos before they reached the age of majority. Nobody ever said how wrong it is for children to be raised in a household of 3 heterosexual bachelors and no mother. Another show had 2 heterosexual divorced women raising 2 teenage daughters about the same age and one boy, with no relationships outside this arrangement for several seasons of the show. I don’t remember the uproar if there was one, that their living arrangement was disgusting or so forth. Yet another show had an “Odd Couple” arrangement of two men who were granted custody of a daughter after the death of her mother. The paternity of the daughter was narrowed down to these two men, who happened to live together anyway (?) and was never discovered for certain, as per the daughter’s request, as she had grown close to both “dads” and decided it wouldn’t be better to know which one was biologically related to her.
There is something wrong with anyone thinking 2 homosexuals can’t marry or adopt children. There is something imaginary that must happen that homosexual parents are any different than any other pair of heterosexual divorcees or widowers and their friends.
Keep in mind, the most important thing we can worry about in ANY situation is what people are doing with their genitals.
I try not to think about what anyone else is doing with their genitals at all. If I had to be perverse about it, I think bible-thumping Christian heterosexual married couples have the most gross sexual intercourse of all anyone can imagine, and so that’s what brain bleach is really for. Nobody tries to stop them from whatever icky things they do to each other, which I imagine means leaving as much of their clothes on as possible and thinking of Jesus while they do it. Women in modest flannel nightgowns up to their chin and down to their ankle, and men wearing black socks with sandals or sneakers they bought at Sears. Just sickening, but I would not tell them they can’t do it, that’s their bedroom and their business. I try not to picture it, but it’s disturbing when I’m forced not to ignore what I think it’s probably like.
haha… have been a fundagelical Pentecostal preacher, I can assure you that most Christians aren’t nearly so prudish when they are alone in their bedroom. :-) In fact, many are quite risque and some are down-right vulgar.
But I will also admit that after my divorce, and then after coming out, the sex was much more enjoyable.
You were a preacher?
yes, Assemblies of God, in both the North Texas District and the South Texas District. I left them in 1983 when I got divorced and let my credentials lapse.
Let your credentials lapse? What, do they require continuing education? You already know the Bible, so what do you do, every year read one more scripture from another religion and send in a form saying “Yep, still believe in the Bible but now I know the Bhagavad Gita is B.S. too.”
In the Assemblies of God, and most other denominations, you can be licensed to preach and then ordained as a minister. Each credentialed minister needs to remain in good standing with the district in order to be recognized by the churches in that district. Usually that merely includes maintaining your church, and submitting your annual ministerial fees/dues. But if it is rumored that you are falling into “false doctrine”, you can be called before the credentialing board and be reprimanded (long ecclesiastic process). Or, if you violate some other doctrine you can either be reprimanded or even have your credentials pulled. For example, I was in the Austin Section of the North Texas District, as assoc. pastor at Montopolis Assembly of God. The sr pastor and his wife, plus me and my wife, had to drive into the South Texas District down to Galveston to go swimming together, because “mixed bathing” (co-ed) was a severe violation of accepted teaching and practice. If we’d been caught swimming together at Zilker Park in Austin, we would have been dismissed. Same if we’d been caught attending a movie theater. Or driving the car with a woman who was not my wife in the front seat (and my wife wasn’t in the car at the same time). ANYthing that could suggest misbehavior was grounds for dismissal back in those days, 35-ish years ago.
My father is a retired Assembly of God minister. He still has his credentials with the church. He was also a Sectional Presybyter within the church for many years. I was raised up in that crap — attended one of the A/G Bible colleges, too, before heading off to uni. The bigotry against gays and lesbians is pervasive. Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to play cards, go to the movies, rollerskate, bowl, dance (not even the bowling or square dancing exercises in 9th grade PE class) and on and on and on…there’s nothing like raising a kid to be picked on by all the other kids. No matter how hard I tried to fit in, I just couldn’t. Life was hell. I dared not cry about it, for my father never spared the rod lest he spoil the child. It was a truly shitty childhood!
Now that the three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has put an indefiinite hold on all gay marriages within the State of California, I’ve been wondering what will come next. Will the evil bastards at the Alliance Defense Fund and other Christian legal firms not only stop gay marriage but also eventually succeed in making homosexuality illegal? Will we see stonings of gays and lesbians? Will we revert to the dark ages? Will there be an American Christian version of a Taliban-like organization which will rule this nation? Is theocracy in our future? I know this is all sounds a bit wild and crazy, but seriously, who knows what the fundamentalists will cook up next! There are an awful lot of USA citizens who call themselves Christian who would also gladly support the execution, imprisonment, deportation or lobotomization of all homosexual citizens.
Seriously.
I know some anti-gay people who love the show Two and a Half Men, but when I asked them offhand how they’d feel about the show if the two men were homosexual partners instead of brothers, they gave me this look like they couldn’t even understand the stupidity that was coming out of my mouth. Obviously two gay men living together and raising a child is so far apart from two men raising a child in any other situation that you can’t even begin to compare them.
They would be having sex. Filthy, dirty gay sex, dontcha know? Possibly also killing puppies, drowning kittens and molesting babies. *rolls eyes*
People are ridiculous.
Excerpt from an article @ Businesweek:
Gay Marriage to Live Happily Ever After: Ann Woolner
In 136 pages, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker analyzed testimony and studies that were scientific, historical, sociological and personal. He examined arguments constitutional and political.
And when he was done, he left little obvious room for reversal on appeal. However conservative the U.S. Supreme Court has become, and however sharply it is divided, chances are decent that the thrust of Walker’s order will survive.
It made me angry when proponents of Prop 8 said, after the trial, “who does this judge think he is to overturn the vote of millions of people in California?” Don’t they know that’s how progress is made? Both with the abolition of slavery and the civil rights movements, to name a couple.
Yeah, that is all BS, along with the “liberal judge” BS.
This judge did his job, which is to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution is there, in part, to protect the minority from the whims of the majority…
And in the case of prop-8 there is reason to suspect that this never even was the will of the majority. Prop-8 backers engaged in some pretty iffy tactics in getting that 52% (bussing in mormon voters, etc).
Amusingly they forget the fact that neither abolition of slavery nor the civil rights movement were voted in. One was a presidential decree and the other was a supreme court decision.
Hello from California, where brimstone is raining from the sky and civilization has ended. And where I personally feel my marriage is degraded by this decision. I mean we got married right at Ground Queer-o* of the gay marriage controversy in San Francisco City Hall and WHO KNEW THERE WERE GAYS THERE? EEEEEK!
In all seriousness…the press picked up right away on Vaughn’s political background (conservative) so the Religious Right couldn’t go very far with that. So of course it’s that Vaughn is biased. Besides the obvious counterargument (aren’t straights biased as well?), I haven’t heard anyone ask Maggie Gallagher et al if Vaughn’s sexuality was a problem all this time, why are we only hearing squeals from her now? It’s almost as if they wouldn’t have brought this up had he ruled in their favor. It’s also interesting that the anti-gay-marriage people who are speaking openly on this issue are more and more often religious officials of some kind; it seems to be getting harder and harder to find secular people willing to be identified with this cause.
Now that Jerry Brown and our GOP governor are asking the courts to allow same-sex marriages to begin immediately, one spokesperson told a radio station here in SoCal that Arnold Schwarzenegger had really become a “girly man”. They’re all class, aren’t they? In all seriousness, you have to wonder about the kind of guy that says, “You know what, I’m about to go on the radio and reach hundreds of thousands of people on this important issue. I better get a homophobic, tasteless zinger in there.” I wonder if any doubt went through his mind the second before it came out of his mouth. His words are very much a matter of public record now. Good luck getting a non-religious spokesperson job ten years from now buddy.
*I just made up Ground Queer-o while I was typing this comment. I’m a nice guy so you can use it if you want.
@Raytheist, sounds like you have to live in fear of the Thought Police…sheesh, can it really be that hard to get people to quit so they can do simple things like go swimming with their wives? Glad you got out and found a better life.
Growing up in the Assemblies of God was hell. It’s very cultish. The members are devoted. I couldn’t get out fast enough, but I don’t think I’m in the majority.
I know it should be but this seemed way to easy. These people are calculating and deceptive. They have a plan and I doubt it is going to be over this easy. They wanted to lose, they want the appeal and they want this to go to the supreme court.
I can’t believe this is anywhere close to settled. Once it goes to the supreme court and will directly influence the entire countries laws the nuts will then really come out of the wood work.
I think the worst is yet to be seen.
This.