Right To Vote/Right To Marry: The Red States

Barney Frank retired from Congress last year. Obama picked a series of crooked Wall Street operators for positions he should have tried filling with brilliant and proven tribunes of the public like Barney and Brad Miller (D-NC), who also resigned last year. I'm not certain what Brad is up to now but Barney has certainly not faded away. Having been for so many years the most noteworthy openly gay Member of Congress, media turned to him in droves for comments about the grudging and narrow Supreme Court ruling that struck down DOMA and kind of struck down California's hateful Prop 8. And Barney, who recently married his partner, was as gleeful as all members of the LGBT community. Like me... well, probably more than me. I'm less an assimilationist and, although I'm happy for the folks who wanted and needed this, I fear it is another deadly blow against what helped make the gay community unique and nonconformist.

But, like Barney, I'm not exactly singing the praises of the Supreme Court. The 5 conservative bastards did something far more destructive the day before by striking down the Voting Rights Act. It's a much bigger deal than letting gays marry-- because it will inevitably lead to a far more conservative and intolerant government, one that could do a great deal of harm to, among others, the LGBT community. Thursday Barney was on MSNBC's Morning Joe and he said that if he had been empowered to decide one Supreme Court decision this week, he would have taken up the case on the 1965 Voting Rights Act and not the Prop 8 marriage ban that is no longer supported by California voters anyway. He explained that the "terrible decision killing the Voting Rights Act" is far more harmful to the country than the marriage equality case. "Racial discrimination," he asserted, correctly, "has been much worse [than discrimination against the LGBT community] in this country and if I could have frankly picked one decision this week,  I'll be honest, it wouldn't have been the gay marriage one. I wish I could have reversed that terrible decision killing the Voting Rights Act because I think there are still serious issues there in democracy." It would be amazing if Scalia, who's 77, wakes up in hell tomorrow and Obama nominates Frank to replace him. And if we all get unicorns for our birthdays.

This wasn't lost on Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) and Keith Ellison (D-MN). They got it just right when they commented on the Supreme Court rulings this week in a joint statement:

“We celebrate today’s decision by the Supreme Court to respect the right of all Americans to marry who they love. The road to today’s victories started 44 years ago at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, where the gay community made a public stand against institutional discrimination. Since that day, LGBT Americans have worked tirelessly for equal rights under the law. The decisions made by the Supreme Court today reaffirm those rights and move our country closer to fulfilling the promise in our Constitution of equal rights for all.

“While today’s rulings were a positive step forward, yesterday’s Supreme Court decision to weaken the Voting Rights Act endangers voting rights and is a troubling step backward. We should celebrate the victory for marriage equality by working together to defend the voices of millions of Americans who may face increased discrimination at the polls after yesterday’s decision. Senator Harry Reid has already vowed that the Senate will act quickly to fix the problems created by yesterday’s ruling. The House should follow his lead as soon as possible.”

So what can, realistically, be done to fix the problem before the Republican just start barring minorities from voting across the Old Confederacy and in states they control like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Indiana? The Senate is where it will start, of course. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), chairman of the Judiciary Committee: "I intend to take immediate action to ensure that we will have a strong and reconstituted Voting Rights Act that protects against racial discrimination in voting." He says he plans to start right after the 4th of July break. Unfortunately, Leahy's counterpart in the House is an old line unreconstructed Confederate and racist pig, Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) and he's not likely to allow any kind of protections for minorities to get through his committee, which is stuffed full of teabaggers and bigots and boasts some of the most contemptible partisan extremists in Congress, like Steve King (R-IA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Jim Jordan (R-OH), Lamar Smith (R-TX), Spencer Bachus (R-AL), Darrell Issa (R-CA), Randy Forbes (R-VA), Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Ted Poe (R-TX), George Holding (R-NC), Doug Collins (R-GA), Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Jason Smith (R-MO).

Pelosi was whistling in the wind when she said "I would like to see something called... the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would address the concerns that the Court put in its decision about Section 4. It’s really a step backward and it’s not a reflection of what is happening in our country in some of these places. And when we put that bill together, when it was passed last time, it passed overwhelming, overwhelming 98 to nothing in the Senate and 390-something to almost nothing in the House. And it was bipartisan and we came to terms on it, in a way that we were all jubilant about the passage of it, Democrats and Republicans alike.”

If Supreme Court justices are really concerned about standing, make Paul Clement give back the BLAG-pilfered millions or make "Sunny John" Boehner pay it all back

The New York Times's Marcus Mabry talks to reporter John Schwartz about the Supreme Court's consecutive days of hearings on marriage-equality issues -- California's Prop 8 yesterday, DOMA today.

by Ken

Court-watchers stress that we mustn't make assumptions about Supreme Court justices' ultimate decisions from the questions they ask during oral arguments. But nobody seems to question that:

(1) Yesterday the justices showed reluctance to take bold action in the appeal to save California's homo-hating Prop 8. What some of of those court-watchers conveniently forget is that the Roberts Court is far from constitutionally averse to bold action. In fact, the five right-wing bozos like nothing better than being able to strike landmark blows, as long as they're in the direction of furthering crackpot right-wing ideology or deep-pocketed corporatist interests.

When it comes to protecting the rights of unempowered citizens, well, then they're free to wallow to their hearts' content in their deep concern for not racing ahead of the country's delicate sensibilities. Like the delicate sensibility in favor of the sacred constitutional rights of corporations, or the delicate sensibility against tampering with the right to spend money on the pretense that it's "speech."

Kind of forgotten in the crush, seemingly by the justices as well as the commentators, is that in the Ninth Circuit ruling being appealed, the appeals court didn't strike Prop 8 down on U.S. constitutional grounds, but on the narrow state constitutional ground that rights that existed as a matter of law were taken away without any tenable justification. All the Supremes have to do is say, "Um, what they said."

(2) Today, in considering the challenges to Section 3 of DOMA, with its hard-to-deny discrimination against same-sex couples, the four moderate justices (as usual referred to incorrectly as "liberal" justices, though there isn't a liberal among them) predictably showed  concern for the "equal protection" of the conspicuously trampled-on rights of citizens in same-sex relationships. The news was that the man everyone was waiting to hear from, swingman "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, seemed sort of willing to possibly tilt in their direction.

Except that the Slowman doesn't really appear to be on the same page as the moderates. He doesn't seem much concerned about those trampled-on rights. What's got Slow Anthony in a tizzy seems to be DOMA's imposition of a single standard on (gasp) all 50 states! Because when has the federal government ever done that?

Well, nobody ever said the sailing would always be smooth when you have a halfwit functioning as the swing vote on the High Court. (It seems only fair to point out that that still leaves Slow A half a wit ahead of the cartoon blockheads of the Court's hard-core Right.)

WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT STANDING?

All accounts of the two days' hearings have noted the extensive consideration reflected in the justices' questioning of the issue of standing, not just in the Prop 8 case, where it has already been a much-discussed issue as to whether the right-wing loonies who pushed for the amendment's passage originally ever had standing to appeal the District Court ruling following the decision of California's governor and attorney general not to do so.

If the justices were to decide that the Proppers, might that mean that the Ninth Circuit's cautious ruling goes out the window (since after all there wouldn't have been a valid appeal) and the more clear-cut District Court ruling is reinstated? Practically speaking, it's a distinction without that much of a difference, since there would be no question of a District Court's ruling having any standing outside California.

The justices' interest in standing on the defense of DOMA was more surprising, and raises more questions. The issue is whether the House's laughably named Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) had standing to rush into the breach when, again, the appropriate agency of government, in this case the Dept. of Justice, made it clear that it wouldn't defend this law that it considered unconstitutional.

I'm sure we'll hear much parsing of the ins and outs of this standing issue in the months between now and the announcement of the Court's ruling(s) in these cases. So let me just press my case for an outcome.

Since BLAG functions with votes of the House speaker and the majority and minority leaders and whips, it's hard to imagine the circumstances in which the the speaker and the majority leader and majority whip weren't an indissoluble bloc. And so in practice BLAG fucntions as a way of making a pretend-bipartisan decision out of the will of the majority party.

Dare we hope that the Court will recognize that the BLAG-gers not only didn't have standing but in fact were being very naughty in their siphoning off of millions of taxpayer dollars to press their personal ideological crusade? And surely it would follow from that the Court might apply one of two remedies:

(1) Make far-right-wing superlawyer Paul Clement, who has been the beneficiary of those pilfered mllions, even though in earning that money his legal briefs have been so preposterously ineffectual that he has appeared more like a legal superninny, give back all the swag.

(2) Or, failing that, make the House GOP con-squad headed by "Sunny John" Boehner, repay the loot to the Treasury.

Either way works for me. Of course we know how timid this Court is about taking sweeping bold actions.

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The Ninth Circuit panel's Prop 8 ruling says some great things, but not what many of us hoped -- or what some people THINK it says!

The Ninth Circuit panel says that legally established rights can't be taken away by ballot proposition just because the organizers don't approve of same-sex couples.

by Ken

Let's be clear at the outset what the three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did and didn't decide in its ruling today on the constitutionality of California's ballot-approved Proposition 8, which you'll no doubt recall had the (intended) effect of overturning the state law, already in effect, that had legalized same-sex marriage.

(1) What the panel did decide

Yes indeed, the ruling -- written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt (appointed to the court by Jimmy Carter) on behalf of himself and Judge Michael Hawkins (appointed by Bill Clinton) -- says that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

(2) What the panel did NOT decide

The ruling goes out of its way to make clear that the panel is not saying that it is necessarily unconstitutional to legally ban same-sex marriage.

Are we all clear on that? Anyone who says, or imagines, that the Ninth Circuit panel ruled today that banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional doesn't know what he's talking about, or perhaps is just fibbing for reasons you'll have to ask him to explain.

SO WHAT DID THE PANEL RULE UNCONSTITUTIONAL?

Glad you asked. What's unconstitutional, according to the ruling, is taking away rights that California same-sex couples previously enjoyed under state law -- rights that were the same as those enjoyed by, you know, other kinds of couples -- just because of their same-sexness.

THE RULING SPEAKS VOLUMES ABOUT THE BASIC
DIGNITY BEFORE THE LAW OF SAME-SEX COUPLES

Hey, now this isn't nothing. We're seeing stuff here that not so long ago we would have been astonished to find coming out of a U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The ruling goes to great lengths to establish: (a) the legal and social importance of the rights at issue, and (b) the absence in the legal record of any remotely valid argument against same-sex couples' entitlement to enjoy those rights, indeed no basis for the existence of Prop 8 except animus of the Prop 8 Propagators.

IN WHICH CONNECTION, I HAVE TO INJECT, IT'S

A SHAME THE VIDEOTAPES WILL REMAIN SEALED

It was just last Thursday, you'll recall, that the Ninth Circuit ruled, also in a decision written by Judge Reinhardt, that the videotapes of the district-court trial presided over by then-Chief Judge Vaughn Walker (now retired) will remain under seal, in accordance with the wishes of the Prop 8 Propagators and contrary to the ruling by Judge Walker's successor, Chief Judge James Ware.

I understand the legal ground, which was basically that there was never authorization to make the videotapes, and Judge Walker had assured all concerned that they would remain under seal. But there's a good reason why the Propagators' shysters wanted to keep those tapes under wraps, and it's not to protect any innocent right-wing thugs from intimidation or reprisals or whatever the legal gorillas were calling it. It's to protect both the lawyers and their so-called witnesses from the public humiliation of being seen presenting a "case" that contained not a single jot or tittle of argument that could be considered by the most wildly generous sane person as remotely relevant legally. It all came down to, basically: God, we hates us them gays and lezzies, and God does too, like it says in the Bible . . . oh wait, forget we mentioned the Bible, you God-hating heathens. Anyway, we're not asking permission to kill them, though if you could find it in your hearts . . . .

I know we have the trial transcripts, and they have been selectively dramatized, but that's not the same thing as allowing the American people to see for themselves the unrelenting emptiness and fraudulence of the Propagators' "case."

ENOUGH OF WHAT THE RULING DOESN'T
SAY. WHAT THE HECK DOES IT SAY?

Here are some chunks I picked out of the early part. (Apologies for typos. I was working from a PDF I couldn't copy and so had to type it out myself.)

Proposition 8 . . . could not have been enacted to advance California's interests in childrearing or responsible procreation, for it had no effect on the rights of same-sex couples to raise children or on the procreative practices of other couples. Nor did Proposition 8 have any effect on religious freedom or on parents' rights to control their children's 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 committed 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, 517 U.S. 620, 633 (1996).

Whether under the Constitution same-sex couples may ever be denied the right to marry, a right that has long been enjoyed by opposite-sex couples, is an important and highly controversial question. It is currently a matter of great debate in our nation, and an issue over which people of good will may disagree, sometimes strongly. . . . We need not ad no to answer the broader question in this case, however, because California had already extended to committed same-sex couples both the incidents of marriage and the official designation of "marriage," and Proposition 8's only effect was to take away that important and legally significant designation, while leaving in place all of its incidents. This unique and limited effect of Proposition 8 allows us to address the amendment's constitutionality on narrow grounds.

THE PANEL DEALT FAIRLY EASILY WITH SOME ISSUES THAT
STOOD IN THE WAY OF ITS SUBSTANTIVE CONSIDERATIONS

(1) The Prop 8 Propagators do have standing to appeal, per California law

This mattered, because if they didn't have standing, there's no appeal, and the judges could go back to playing pinochle or whatever they would otherwise be doing. The panel accepted that the Prop 8 Propagators have standing under California law to defend their handiwork in the courts when the state officials who would normally be expected to do so, specifically the governor and the attorney general, refuse to do so -- in this case because they believed it to be unconstitutional.

In the appellate judges' minds, the standing issue is an issue of California state law. You'll recall that the panel specifically invited the California Supreme Court to rule on the question, which it did, in November, deciding in the Prop 8 Propagators' favor.

One can't help wondering when this will come back to bite a lot of exposed behinds, but the point is that they'll be strictly Californian behinds. Accepting the state Supreme Court's judgment was an easy matter for the panel, and meant that it still could (or had to) decide on the legal merits of the appeal.

(2) The attack on Judge Walker's impartiality is silly

This was the claim, you'll recall, that because Judge Walker was himself involved in a long-term same-sex relationship, he might have had a personal stake in wishing same-sex marriage to become legal. (This is, you see, so he could, you know, get married.) Of course none of the right-wing shysters working for the Propagators believe this for a wingnut second. It's just mildly ingenious legalspeak -- you know, the way it pretends to make the case that Judge Walker wasn't entirely impartial -- for what they really want to say, which is something like: Mother of Christ, we aren't gonna effin' let some goddamn effin' fairy decide whether all the other fags 'n' lesbos can get married, are we? This is effin' America -- eff you!

AND WHILE THE MAJORITY JUDGES TRY TO KEEP THE
FOCUS TIGHT, THE MINORITY LOON GOES HOG WILD

Having been duly warned, I didn't have the heart to wade into the dissenting opinion of "Chimpy" Bush appointee Judge Randy Smith, which can be important because it becomes available to any, er, higher powers that may find themselves looking at the case with a view to deciding it the other way. The report of colleagues who have read Judge Smith's opinion confirms my suspicion that while the majority was working so hard to keep the focus tight, the minority loon was going hog wild, in an orgy of legal straw-grasping, obfuscation, and mindless hysteria, stopping just short of advocating rounding up all them damn same-sex preverts and shutting them away in internment camps. Or maybe Guantánamo?

SO WHAT'S THE SITUATION NOW?

Buried in footnote 27 of Judge Reinhardt's ruling is a continuation of the stay already in place, ordered by the Ninth Circuit in August 2010, "remains in effect pending issuance of the mandate." Courage Campaign's Prop 8 Trial Tracker, which has been updating its post all day and will no doubt continue to do so, got this comment from Chris Stoll, senior attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights: "Mandate issues 7 days after the deadline for filing a petition for rehearing expires, or 7 days after petition for rehearing is denied, whichever is later. I expect that the proponents will ask for a further stay from 9th Circuit, and if that is not granted, they will ask the Supreme Court."

WILL THERE BE APPEALS, AND WHAT KIND?

Well, we'll have to see. Both sides insisted before the ruling was filed that they would appeal if they lost, and it's hard to imagine the hard-core California LGBT-haters sitting quietly by. They could ask for an en banc hearing by an 11-judge court chosen from the Ninth Circuit's 26 sitting judges, but the court itself would have to vote to authorize it, and that may be a tough sell.

Naturally, everyone is speculating about possible appeal to the Supreme Court. (Again, you'll find lots in the Prop 8 Trial Tracker post updates.) It has been pointed out that the narrow crafting of the ruling and Judge Reinhardt's written opinion seems to have anticipated the "thinking" of Justice "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, author of the most nearly relevant High Court decision, Romer v. Evans. I'm thinking that, given the very narrowness of the decision, and its applicability, basically, only to California, there may not even be any reason for the Supreme Court to accept the case -- it's not as if there's any immediate issue of its applicability to any other U.S. circuits. Hell, it doesn't even apply to the whole of the Ninth, just to California.

On the other hand, in my possibly paranoid scenario, the High Court's Rock-Head Five -- sneering at that dope Reinhardt's blithering about deciding on the narrowest ground -- may take the case for the purpose of redeciding it on the broadest possible grounds, taking this as an opportunity not only to kill same-sex marriage but to give the Prop 8 Propagators that permission to intern all known or suspected LGBT-ers, if not actually kill them. (Don't forget Judge Loon's Smith's dissent, sitting there like a ticking time bomb.)

Stay tuned for further developments, or at least fulminations.

OH WAIT, COULD WE LEAVE THE SUBJECT WITHOUT
HEARING FROM PRESIDENT-IN-WAITING WILLARD INC.?

TPM's got it, in "Romney Slams California Gay Marriage Ruling":

Today, unelected judges cast aside the will of the people of California who voted to protect traditional marriage. This decision does not end this fight, and I expect it to go to the Supreme Court. That prospect underscores the vital importance of this election and the movement to preserve our values. I believe marriage is between a man and a woman and, as president, I will protect traditional marriage and appoint judges who interpret the Constitution as it is written and not according to their own politics and prejudices.

You were expecting maybe the yutz would keep his fool trap shut?


UPDATE: A Somwhat Different Reaction To The Ruling Than Willard's

Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs Reps. Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison almost immediately released the following statement praising the U.S. Court of Appeals ruling striking down Prop 8:

“Today the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the best of America. We do not legislate our prejudices and discrimination should not be legal in the greatest country on Earth.

“Even if narrow special interest groups consider same sex couples second class citizens, the Constitution does not. Equal protection cannot be overturned by any vote or undermined by any amount of divisive rhetoric. This decision should serve as a warning to opponents of the freedom to marry across the country. 
 
“We stand shoulder to shoulder with gay and lesbian Americans in celebrating this triumph for justice and equality.”

They head Congress' biggest Democratic Party caucus and speak for most Democrats, if not the Blue Dogs.

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OMG! Mormon Homophobes Just Took Over My Healthfood Store!

My hill isn't zoned for stores but I can hike down to Hillhurst in Los Feliz Village to do some shopping at the local healthfood store if I want to. I've been shopping at Nature Mart since I moved to L.A. two decades ago. Last month the owner sold it but there was a big hush-hush mystery about who bought it. I went over there yesterday, the first day of the new operation, to check it out. The Nature Mart signs are all still up and the store looks pretty much the same. But then I saw the bags-- Lassen's Natural Foods. Oh, God, no!

I recognized the name immediately. Lassen's is owned by a vicious hate-monger and Mormon militant, Peter Lassen, who helped finance the Mormon attack on Prop 8 here in California. Rural, backward Lassen County, the reddest county in California, is named for his great grandfather, also Peter Lassen. The county voted 71.3 % for Proposition 8, amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriages. Lassen's store in Ventura alone contributed $27,500 to the anti-gay jihad. His store in Camarillo ponied up another $3,000 and his store in Simi Valley gave more. In the end, Lassen gave tens of thousands of dollars towards institutionalizing bigotry and hatred in our communities. The Los Feliz/Silverlake area is one of the most gay-friendly parts of Los Angeles. What a stupid decision for him to buy a store in an area where everyone is going to hear about what he did and look for alternative places to shop!

In fact, yesterday I met my new neighbors-- a screen writer and a viola player. They just bought the house across the street. I have to remember to warn them. And Cynthia will be so excited. She thinks the store is dirty and when I get her about the bigotry part, I bet she'll really get on her husband to stop buying vitamins there. Thing is, if you walk in and buy some organic Swiss chard, you're helping to finance hatred and bigotry against our neighbors. There's no place for people like Peter Lassen around here. He should go back to Lassen County.

And this isn't the problem:


Lassen's niece, who personally donated anti-gay money herself and manages the store in Camarillo (owned by her father, John Lassen), defended the idea that the stores gave money to defeat Prop 8. "We have a lot a gay and lesbian customers. We have nothing against them. To us, it is a moral issue, not a civil issue... Sadly, people feel like they have to blame somebody. It's not just Mormons who voted for this. It was passed by a majority of Californians. We love our gay and lesbian customers. If they don't want to shop at our store, then that's their choice. I can respect that, but they should respect my family's beliefs, too. It's pretty sad how mean people can be."

Yes, we're mean because we object to a bunch of wealthy freaks financing a hate-filled proposition targeting our families, friends and neighbors.

That's Entertainment Dept.: (1) Right-wing Prop 8 nitwittitude, (2) Waiting for the "Big C" season finale

Sorry, the Big C clip seems to be iffy from the Showtime website. (Heavy pre-show use tonight, perhaps? I'm getting it OK in Firefox, but not in Safari.) But then, I wasn't going to watch it anyway! -- Ken


Showtime's preview for tonight's Season 2 finale of The Big C -- I'm not going to watch it till after I've seen the show, but you may be less fussy about the risk of having elements of the show spoiled for you.

by Ken

(1) REVISITING THE MODERN-DAY POLITICAL QUESTION:
ARE ALL RIGHT-WINGERS MENTAL DEFFECTIVES?

The New Yorker's Michael Schulman has a "Talk of the Town" piece in the new (October 3) issue, "Do-over," about a play that screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk and the upcoming J. Edgar) has fashioned out of the transcripts of the San Francisco trial in which lawyers David Boies and Theodore Olson successfully pressed their case that California's Prop 8 same-sex marriage ban is unconstitutional. The play is called 8, and a star-studded reading was held last Monday in New York, with Morgan Freeman as Boies, John Lithgow as Olson, Bradley Whitford as hapless defense attorney Charles Cooper, Bob Balaban as Judge Vaughn Walker, Christine Lahti and Ellen Barkin as plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, Jayne Houdyshell as Maggie Gallagher, and the likes of Anthony Edwards, Rob Reiner, and Yeardley Smith as witnesses.

Schulman tells us that Black was present for 10 of the trial's 12 days of testimony (missing the others because of movie-project prep work), and his task in reimagining the proceedings in dramatic form --

was to shave down three weeks of material, some of it mired in legalese. "It's incredibly dense, and you have to communicate it in a way that is clear to an audience that hasn't gone through law school."

It's an entertaining piece, well worth your attention (and for once we've got a New Yorker item that's actually available free online). We learn, for example, that David Boies considered it "a real thrill to have Morgan Freeman play me," though he acknowledged that Ed Begley Jr., who played him in the HBO film Recount, looks more like him.

But the reason I bring this all up is for the sake of this exchange that Schulman reproduces.

David Blankenthorn, a marriage "expert" who was the defense's only witness, served as comic foil, as in this Abbott and Costello-like exchange, drawn from the cross-examination by the plaintiffs' attorney, David Boies:

Let me stress again that in broaching this question of whether all right-wingers are mentally defective, I am of course excluding those who who are unabashedly serving their personal economic or power-gathering interests, notably our beloved economic predators and powermongers and their associated stooges. For the rest, the evidence continues to pile up.


(2) COUNTING DOWN TO THE EVERYTHING-CHANGES
SEASON 2 FINALE OF THE BIG C, "CROSSING THE LINE"

The relationship between fellow clinical-trial subjects Lee (Hugh Dancy) and Cathy (Laura Linney) got off to a rocky start, to put it mildly.

Probably a good rule of thumb for folks in the trenches pitching new TV shows: If you're looking for something with the possibility of a long run and a profitable syndication package, you probably don't want to build your project around a terminally ill person.

This was obviously a problem, or at any rate a feature, built into The Big C (created by Darlene Hunt, who has written or co-written all 26 episodes to date). Considering how strong a bond the show's producers and writers and of course actress Laura Linney created between viewers and their Stage IV melanoma sufferer Cathy Jamison, it was good news that Showtime ordered a second season, but considering the show's basic premise, it is kind of term-limited. Sure, medical miracles happen, and we all hope that the clinical trial Cathy managed to get into this season will buy her some more time, still, this is supposed to be a show about a woman getting on with her life in the knowledge that the end is in sight. (Not in Season 2, though, since a Season 3 has been announced. So I guess that's not part of thehuge-surprise, everything-changes-type events Showtime has been promoting for the season finale, "Crossing the Line." I wish they wouldn't do that, or feel the need to do that. Let the show team do their damned show the way they want, and then have the network people market that to people who might enjoy it. )

For Cathy and husband Paul (Oliver Platt) and son Adam (Gabriel Basso) and Cathy's bipolar brother Sean (John Benjamin Hickey) and the assorted people woven into their lives, it's been another strong season of getting on with those lives, with more humor than one might think possible given the basic situation. But I thought last week's next-to-last episode of the season, "The Darkest Day," was especially strong in bringing us back to that central reality, and I doubt that I was alone in being overwhelmed by the death of Lee (Hugh Dancy), the "soul mate" Cathy discovered in the clinical trial being run by Dr. Sherman (Alan Alda).

As a side note, it's a tribute to the human dimension of the show that the two characters who have sent to meet their maker -- Cathy's eccentric neighbor Marlene (Phyllis Somerville) and now Lee, both of whom were introduced with decidedly hard-to-crack exteriors -- became so dear to at least this viewer.

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If the defenders of the institution of marriage secretly mean to ridicule the institution of religion, they're doing great!

Here, looking no weirder for being mysteriously flipped, is the opening of the season-opening episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, "Mac Fights Gay Marriage" -- the definitive statement on marriage in America in 2010, and perhaps on religion too, as Mac demands, "Where's our goddamn Bible?"

"Who gives a shit if gays want to be miserable like everybody else and get married? Let 'em do it! It's no skin off my ass!"

-- Frank Reynolds (Danny DeVito), in the Season 6

opener of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

by Ken

The last surviving defenders of California's Prop 8 filed their brief to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals just ahead of the deadline Friday night, and while I realize it was just a coincidence of timing, it was the very day afterIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia slunk back onto the TV schedule, in the secluded precincts of FX's Thursday-night schedule, with an episode, "Mac Fights Gay Marriage," so sublimely cracked as to constitute, I think, the definitive statement on the State of Marriage in America in the Year 2010.

Who knew, or could even imagine, that Dennis (Glenn Howerton, the show's other creator), the world's most exclusively self-involved human, has marriage on his mind? With consequences, before the episode's end, that I can only describe as eye-popping. Or that his sister Dee (Kaitlin Olson) would semi-overcome the "gagginess" that afflicted her 15 years earlier in the presence of her then-heartthrob, with also-surprising consequences. Or that their not-really-father Frank (Danny DeVito) would find himself attempting to establish a legal domestic partnership with poor, sweet, dim Charlie (Charlie Day)? (I don't think Frank actually set out to be the world's most disgusting human being. Sometimes these things just work out.)

But above all, who would have dreamt that the religious opponents-to-the-death of marriage equality would one day have as their most eloquent standard bearer none other than the addle-pated Mac (Rob McElhenney, the show's other creator)? Unfortunately for their side, Mac does eventually get hold of "a goddamn Bible," and makes possibly the stupidest case that can be imagined, at least until you take a gander at the brief filed by the religious ignoramuses in the Prop 8 case.

Of course it remains to be seen whether the actually are "in" the case. The Ninth Circuit made a point of insisting that they explain what makes them, as parties not named in the original lawsuit, think they have standing to litigate an appeal. Eventually their brief gets around to that, sort of, citing a New Jersey case that has no applicability to California. The twisted argument they wind up making is described by Brian Devine, on Prop8TrialTracker, as "laugh-out-loud ridiculous."

As for the substance of the case, well, in the District Court trial Judge Vaughn Walker did everything but walk up to the boobies defending the case and shake them while demanding they make some kind of case besides just blithering "procreation, procreation, procreation." From the "case" made in the brief, it's hard to tell whether the professional homophobes are too stupid or too dishonest to do any better. As Karen Ocamb recounts:

the Prop 8 proponents claim the plaintiffs erroneously argued that there was animus on the part of the people of California, when in fact the legal team of Ted Olson and David Boies argued convincingly that it was the proponents and pushers of Prop 8 who were motivated by animus toward gay people:

This charge is false and unfair on its face, and leveling it against the people of California is especially unfounded, for they have enacted into law some of the Nation’s most sweeping and progressive protections of gays and lesbians, including a domestic partnership law that gives same sex couples all the same substantive benefits and protections as marriage. And it defames as anti-gay bigots not only seven million California voters, but everyone else in this Country, and elsewhere, who believes that the traditional opposite-sex definition of marriage continues to meaningfully serve society’s interests – from the current President of the United States, to a large majority of legislators throughout the Nation, both in statehouses and in the United States Congress, and even to most of he scores of state and federal judges who have addressed the issue.

What they really want to do, of course, is break into a chorus of "How do I know? The Bible tells me so," but they understand that isn't going to make a persuasive legal argument. As some wags have already wondered, though, is this really the best legal talent the homophobes can afford? When it comes to oral arguments, assuming it does come to oral arguments -- given the standing question -- the Prop 8-ers might do better to have Mac get up before the Ninth Circuit judges and do his extension-cord demonstration to explain how marriage is about procreation.

Unless the whole thing is actually about Mac wanting to boink the breathtaking post-op Carmen (Brittany Daniel). Again, probably not a great legal argument, but better than anything the Prop 8 crowd has come up with.

#

The Prop 8 case is far from over, but Governor Arnold gets it right

It was a happy day for democratic values.

"For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all Californians to consider our history of leading the way to the future, and our growing reputation of treating all people and their relationships with equal respect and dignity."

-- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a statement

following the release of Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling

by Ken

My e-mailbox is stuffed with statements issued in the wake of District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling declaring California's same-sex-marriage ban unconstitutional, saying pretty much the same thing. I have to say, I'm kind of partial to Governor Schwarzenegger's statement. (The governor, you'll recall, refused to defend the proposition, as did California AG Jerry Brown, in the legal challenge, lawyered famously by political odd couple David Boies and Ted Olson.) Here's the governor's full statement:

Judge Walker had the great responsibility of deciding whether Proposition 8 violates the Constitution of the United States. He heard in-depth arguments from both sides on fundamental questions of due process, equal protection and freedom from discrimination. There are strong feelings on both sides of this issue, and I am glad that all viewpoints were respected throughout the proceedings. We should also recognize that there will continue to be different points of view in the wake of this decision.

For the hundreds of thousands of Californians in gay and lesbian households who are managing their day-to-day lives, this decision affirms the full legal protections and safeguards I believe everyone deserves. At the same time, it provides an opportunity for all Californians to consider our history of leading the way to the future, and our growing reputation of treating all people and their relationships with equal respect and dignity.

Today's decision is by no means California's first milestone, nor our last, on America's road to equality and freedom for all people.

In a way, hardly anything substantive happened today with the issuance, as promised yesterday, of Judge Walker's ruling. As of now, people of the same sex still can't get married in California, and it's possible that that may remain true while the case works its way up the chain of appeals. There's certainly no assurance that the ruling will withstand that rocky ride.

We already knew that whichever way the ruling went, an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers California, was inevitable, and it was also all but certain that even if Prop 8 was overturned, it wouldn't go into effect immediately. Practically speaking, time had to be allowed for some sort of consideration of appeal -- if not by Judge Walker himself, then by the Circuit Court. And indeed, after the ruling was released, it was quickly discovered that Judge Walker had stayed entry of his judgment until the pro-Prop 8 Bigots 'n' Haters have an opportunity to make their case for a stay, which he has ordered them to do by Friday.

Even if Judge Walker rules against the stay application, presumably the bigots can still go to the Ninth Circuit for a stay pending appeal. And even once the Ninth Circuit has its say, whenever that is (we're going to hear much chatter about the procedures for expedited hearing), assuming it goes the same way as the District Court ruling, we know for sure that the Prop 8 Bigots 'n' Haters will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court -- and just remember who's sitting on that court, even assuming Justice Kagan will have taken her place by then. Don't forget that the extreme right-wing savages of the Roberts Court loathe the liberal Ninth Circuit. They probably don't even think of it as a court, but as more of a socialist conspiracy.

ALL OF THAT SAID, THIS IS A PRETTY DARNED
REMARKABLE THING THAT HAPPENED TODAY

Of course none of us knew how Judge Walker was going to rule, but he gave plenty of indication during the trial -- not, as the compulsively lying liars of the hate-mongering Right would have it, because he was prejudiced, but because, unlike the lying liars, he actually paid attention to the cases being presented. Now that we have his ruling, the only real surprise is the unequivocal sweep of it.

I certainly haven't read the full 138-page opinion, but I don't think we're misrepresenting it if we jump to the climax:

CONCLUSION

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

REMEDIES

Plaintiffs have demonstrated by overwhelming evidence that Proposition 8 violates their due process and equal protection rights and that they will continue to suffer these constitutional violations until state officials cease enforcement of Proposition 8. California is able to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as it has already issued 18,000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples and has not suffered any demonstrated harm as a result, see FF 64-66; moreover, California officials have chosen not to defend Proposition 8 in these proceedings.

Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8. The clerk is DIRECTED to enter judgment without bond in favor of plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenors and against defendants and defendant-intervenors pursuant to FRCP 58.

IT IS SO ORDERED.

Again, we really shouldn't be surprised. The Prop 8 Bigots 'n' Haters will try to deny it, of course, and can be counted on to try to make a federal case of the judge's own apparent sexual orientation, but as anyone who paid even the slightest attention to the trial knows, Judge Walker conducted it as scrupulously as it could have been conducted, and did everything in his judicial power to ensure that the Prop 8 Bigots 'n' Haters produced some kind of defense for the legal abomination they engineered. However, it was obvious from the prosecution's case, and perhaps even more from the defense's pathetic noncase, that their position was utterly indefensible.

Of course it was important to the Prop 8 Bigots 'n' Haters that as few people as possible be able to see for themselves what worthless vermin they are, and how utterly devoid of even the slightest shred of legal defense, and so it was crucial that they do everything possible to prevent the televising of the proceedings for all to see -- and even to prevent Judge Walker's compromise suggestion of recording for delayed viewing, perhaps online. In a preview of the final battle that may yet play out on this issue, the Supreme Court was all too cooperative. There was no good legal reason for imposing that blackout on the trial, but of course good legal reasoning is anathema to judges of the Roberts Court's persuasion, who believe only in their primitive, savage ideology, backed by whatever bogus legal reasoning the job demands.

Now, for the Prop 8 Bigots 'n' Haters to have any hope of prevailing in the court of public opinion, it's important that people not be able to see for themselves that there was nothing to the case for Prop 8 once all that Mormon cash no longer mattered, nor the endless cascades of hate-mongering filth poured into the minds of ignorant and terrified voters by clergymen who make a mockery of the very concept of religion.

SURE, WE HAVE A LONG WAY TO GO, BUT IF YOU HAVE
A SENSE OF HISTORY, WE'VE SURE COME A LONG WAY

You don't have to have that long a memory to recall a time when it couldn't have been imagined that such a ruling could be delivered by a U.S. District Court judge (a Republican appointee, no less).

Of course the Bigots 'n' Haters will use this decision as a rallying point for the cause of bigotry and hatred. They have become increasingly strident and venomous as they've sensed that history is passing them by. Americans increasingly just don't care about their fellow Americans' affectional preferences. This has been almost inevitable as more and more Americans have come to know -- or rather be aware that they know -- LGBT people, who in reality are no different from anybody else. But when you threaten such people's reason for existing, they can be dangerous.

Because, after all, they know they're losing.

FOR A GOOD RUNDOWN ON THE LEGAL
INS AND OUTS OF THE RULING --

Check out Chris Geidner's MetroWeekly account.

#

Somehow the delicate sensibilities of bigots and right-wing activists have become a right that trumps all other public interests

Focus on the Family's 30-second Super Bowl spot hasn't been released but is known to feature 2007 Heisman Trophy-winning University of Florida QB Tim Tebow expressing thanks that his mother chose not to abort him -- a private family decision that you'd like to think wouldn't be anybody else's business, not to mention irrelevant to the agonizing decision other women face. CBS can't understand why anyone's upset that the network has broken the long-standing ban on Super Bowl advocacy ads for this.

"To recap: CBS wouldn't allow a group to criticize Bush, wouldn't let a religious group promote its own tolerance of LGBT families and considers a light-hearted dating ad out of bounds. But CBS is perfectly happy to allow Focus on the Family to promote its conservative social agenda."

-- from Credo Action's campaign to persuade CBS to reject
Focus on the Family's pro-choice Super Bowl commercial

by Ken

Poor CBS. The Super Bowl, now just a week away, is supposed to be nothing but a cash-generating bonanza. As the commercial rates go up and up, even in a crappy economy there seems to be no difficulty selling all that time.

But when there's so much money on the table, you can be sure there are going to be problems. As you've surely heard, CBS has gotten its balls caught in a bad squeeze over the issue of advertising acceptance and what is or isn't "within the Network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday," by breaking its own -- and every other network's -- long-standing rule against advocacy advertising on the Super Bowl.

CBS: Don't air anti-abortion Super Bowl ad

The broadcast networks that air the Super Bowl have historically rejected advocacy ads. Yet CBS, which is airing the Super Bowl this year, has accepted an anti-choice ad by the ultra-conservative group Focus on the Family.

Focus on the Family's "celebrate life" (read: anti-choice) ad features Heisman Trophy-winning college football star Tim Tebow. And CBS approved this anti-choice ad, even though the network has repeatedly rejected advocacy ads in past years including a 2004 MoveOn.org ad that went after then-President Bush's fiscal irresponsibility and an ad the same year from the United Church of Christ showing them welcoming a gay couple who had been turned away from another church.

Sign the petition to CBS insisting they follow their no-advocacy policy and reject the Focus on the Family ad before the Super Bowl on February 7.

More recently, on Friday CBS rejected an ad from a gay dating site showing two men discovering a mutual attraction when their hands brush in the potato chip bowl. The actors then pantomime a comical make-out session. But CBS says the ad "is not within the Network's broadcast standards for Super Bowl Sunday."

So to recap: CBS wouldn't allow a group to criticize Bush, wouldn't let a religious group promote its own tolerance of LGBT families and considers a light-hearted dating ad out of bounds. But CBS is perfectly happy to allow Focus on the Family to promote its conservative social agenda.

We must call CBS out on its hypocrisy and demand that it also reject the Focus on the Family ad. The Super Bowl is America's annual most-watched television event; more than 98 million Americans tuned in last year. And as anyone who's ever been to a Super Bowl party knows, the ads can be even more closely watched than the game, which is why CBS must not unfairly allow anti-choice commercials while rejecting those for other causes.

Sign the petition today urging CBS to follow its own anti-advocacy policy, reverse the decision, and deny Focus on the Family's anti-choice ad.

What really alarms me here is that we now seem to have enshrined a double standard for "acceptability" at both the corporate and the judicial level: What's "acceptable" in advertising or other decisions involving competing claims for respect is who stands to be offended.

In case after case, such decisions, whether made by corporations or courts, seem based on the premise that there's one segment of the American public whose rights, not to mention feelings and beliefs, can be trampled on with utter impunity, with hardly even a second though, while there's another segment of the American public whose delicate sensibilities must always be protected.

It seems to underlie court decisions as to whose privacy must be protected when it comes to making public personal information about issue-campaign donors. (The privacy rights of crusading bigots get a whole lot of respect, while the efforts of people to secure equal treatment under the law are sneered at.) Or again, the Supreme Court's (predictably 5-4) decision struck down Judge Vaughn Walker's plan to experiment, as permitted by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, with limited video coverage of the trial of the constitutionality of Prop 8 seems to have come down to the need to protect the privacy of God-fearing American bigots who would be taking the stand to defend continued legal institutionalization of their bigotry. Apparently they're willing to testify, but they're afraid of being seen doing so, and once again the delicate sensibilities of safely-in-the-box bigots trumps all other public interests.

Whether its private citizens like the CBS censors or legal hoodlums like the Supreme Court majority, there seem to me to be two processes at work, and they're both hateful and unacceptable.

(1) It takes literally no thought to discriminate against people or ideas that are outside the box of orthodoxy.

When you discriminate reflexively against groups or classes of people other than your own, or against ideas that are different from your own, just because you don't have to think about it doesn't make it not discrimination. After all, that's the level on which most discrimination and bigotry occurs.

People don't stop to think, "If I prefer not to offer this person a job, or allow him/her to rent an apartment, or patronize my business establishment, or date my daughter, because of the person's skin color or religion or sexual orientation or political beliefs, that would be bigoted, but dang it all, I'm going to do it anyways." Well, maybe sometimes they do, but by and large that's now the way discrimination and bigotry are accomplished.

If your words or actions are discriminatory or bigoted, it doesn't matter whether you planned it that way; it doesn't matter whether you thought about it for weeks or didn't give it a moment's thought -- it's still discriminatory or bigoted. This seems so blindingly obvious that I'm almost embarrassed to have to point it out, but an awful lot of people either have forgotten it or never knew it. When, for example, you discriminate on the basis of, say, race, your action really and truly doesn't have to be accompanied by a sworn affidavit saying, "I sure as s--t hates me them effin' N-words," to qualify as discrimination.

(2) There's hardly any price to pay for causing offense to non-orthodox people or ideas, while causing offense to orthodox people or ideas can bring you worlds of unwanted attention and even economic distress.

And the defenders of orthodoxy work very hard to make sure that this is as true as they can make it. When the people in charge of accepting or rejecting TV advertising, for example, reject content that will offend only people they see as "dirty fucking hippie" types while accepting content that will offend people who are known to organize dangerously loud and disruptive countermeasures or to actually jeopardize their revenue streams by pressuring customers or advertisers or the like, it's understandable but not OK, ethically or (one hopes) legally.

Today's defenders of discrimination and bigotry have become sophisticated enough to claim that they're just protecting everyone's First Amendment rights. But of course usually that's exactly what they're not doing. They're "protecting the rights" of people and ideas they either agree with or are afraid of, while cavalierly dismissing protections for people and ideas they don't agree with or fear. The whole point of the First Amendment is to protect unpopular or non-mainstream ideas. Orthodox ideas don't often need protection.

As I said, both of these thought processes seem to me repugnant to any concept of fairness and/or decency, and as far as I can see, neither has any foundation or even measure of acceptability in law. They need to be stopped.

#

"It is time, indeed past time, that we accord [gays and lesbians] the basic human right to marry the person they love"

Famed liberal lawyer David Boies . . . oops, sorry, that's Ed Begley Jr. playing David Boies. Boies has a bit more hair.

"The argument in favor of Proposition 8 ultimately comes down to no more than the tautological assertion that a marriage is between a man and a woman. But a slogan is not a substitute for constitutional analysis. Law is about justice, not bumper sticker."

-- David Boies, in a WSJ op-ed piece today (see below)

by Ken

David Boies is known, not just as one of the country's leading trial lawyers, but as one of our hardest-core liberal legal eagles. He achieved a new level of notoriety as Gore campaign's chief lawyer in legal wrangling following the 2000 presidential voting -- not exactly his finest legal hour, of course, but with the Supreme Court "fix" in, it doesn't seem likely that in the end anyone could have done any better.

A lot of eyebrows were raised earlier this year when Boies and his opposite number in the Bush v. Gore legal wrangling, former Bush regime Solicitor General Ted Olson, announced that they were joining forces to mount a federal court challenge to California's recently passed Proposition 8, which amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

Olson is known as the bedrockiest bedrock of the D.C. right-wing legal establishment -- his Wikipedia bio notes that he " was present at the first meeting of the Federalist Society." It turns out that he is by no means as doctrinaire a right-wing loon, or at least not as strictly "party line" a right-wing loon, as many of us assumed, and he has deep feelings of an apparently libertarian nature in this area.

Today the opinion-mongers of the Wall Street Journal gave Boies space to explain "why Ted Olson and I are working to overturn California's Proposition 8." I think the whole thing is worth reading.

Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Why Ted Olson and I are working to overturn California's Proposition 8.

By DAVID BOIES

When I got married in California in 1959 there were almost 20 states where marriage was limited to two people of different sexes and the same race. Eight years later the Supreme Court unanimously declared state bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional.

Recently, Ted Olson and I brought a lawsuit asking the courts to now declare unconstitutional California's Proposition 8 limitation of marriage to people of the opposite sex. We acted together because of our mutual commitment to the importance of this cause, and to emphasize that this is not a Republican or Democratic issue, not a liberal or conservative issue, but an issue of enforcing our Constitution's guarantee of equal protection and due process to all citizens.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to marry the person you love is so fundamental that states cannot abridge it. In 1978 the Court (8 to 1, Zablocki v. Redhail) overturned as unconstitutional a Wisconsin law preventing child-support scofflaws from getting married. The Court emphasized, "decisions of this Court confirm that the right to marry is of fundamental importance for all individuals." In 1987 the Supreme Court unanimously struck down as unconstitutional a Missouri law preventing imprisoned felons from marrying.

There were legitimate state policies that supported the Wisconsin and Missouri restrictions held unconstitutional. By contrast, there is no legitimate state policy underlying Proposition 8. The occasional suggestion that marriages between people of different sexes may somehow be threatened by marriages of people of the same sex does not withstand discussion. It is difficult to the point of impossibility to envision two love-struck heterosexuals contemplating marriage to decide against it because gays and lesbians also have the right to marry; it is equally hard to envision a couple whose marriage is troubled basing the decision of whether to divorce on whether their gay neighbors are married or living in a domestic partnership. And even if depriving lesbians of the right to marry each other could force them into marrying someone they do not love but who happens to be of the opposite sex, it is impossible to see how that could be thought to be as likely to lead to a stable, loving relationship as a marriage to the person they do love.

Moreover, there is no longer any credible contention that depriving gays and lesbians of basic rights will cause them to change their sexual orientation. Even if there was, the attempt would be constitutionally defective. But, in fact, the sexual orientation of gays and lesbians is as much a God-given characteristic as the color of their skin or the sexual orientation of their straight brothers and sisters. It is also a condition that, like race, has historically been subject to abusive and often violent discrimination. It is precisely where a minority's basic human rights are abridged that our Constitution's promise of due process and equal protection is most vital.

Countries as Catholic as Spain, as different as Sweden and South Africa, and as near as Canada have embraced gay and lesbian marriage without any noticeable effect -- except the increase in human happiness and social stability that comes from permitting people to marry for love. Several states -- including Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont -- have individually repealed their bans on same-sex marriage as inconsistent with a decent respect for human rights and a rational view of the communal value of marriage for all individuals. But basic constitutional rights cannot depend on the willingness of the electorate in any given state to end discrimination. If we were prepared to consign minority rights to a majority vote, there would be no need for a constitution.

The ban on same-sex marriages written into the California Constitution by a 52% vote in favor of Proposition 8 is the residue of centuries of figurative and literal gay-bashing. California allows same-sex domestic partnerships that, as interpreted by the California Supreme Court, provide virtually all of the economic rights of marriage. So the ban on permitting gay and lesbian couples to actually marry is simply an attempt by the state to stigmatize a segment of its population that commits no offense other than falling in love with a disapproved partner, and asks no more of the state than to be treated equally with all other citizens. In 2003 the United States Supreme Court in Lawrence v. Texas held that states could not constitutionally outlaw consensual homosexual activity. As Justice Anthony Kennedy elegantly wrote rejecting the notion that a history of discrimination might trump constitutional rights, "Times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom."

There are those who sincerely believe that homosexuality is inconsistent with their religion -- and the First Amendment guarantees their freedom of belief. However, the same First Amendment, as well as the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses, preclude the enshrinement of their religious-based disapproval in state law.

Gays and lesbians are our brothers and sisters, our teachers and doctors, our friends and neighbors, our parents and children. It is time, indeed past time, that we accord them the basic human right to marry the person they love. It is time, indeed past time, that our Constitution fulfill its promise of equal protection and due process for all citizens by now eliminating the last remnant of centuries of misguided state discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The argument in favor of Proposition 8 ultimately comes down to no more than the tautological assertion that a marriage is between a man and a woman. But a slogan is not a substitute for constitutional analysis. Law is about justice, not bumper stickers.

Mr. Boies is the chairman of Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP.

#

Rights Have Rarely Been Handed Out-- They're Fought For

Late yesterday afternoon it was reported that California's Supreme Court will be announcing its ruling on the challenge to Prop. 8 on Tuesday. I'm sure lots of people will be sitting on needles and pins between now and then-- not just here in California but everywhere with big concentrations of the bigoted Mormons who financed the hate-filled proposition that wrecked marriage equality-- not in Utah where 72% of the population is in the LDS cult or Idaho (27%) or Nevada (7%). Only 2% of Californians are Mormons.

The court announced the impending decision today in lawsuits by same-sex couples and local governments, led by San Francisco, seeking to overturn the measure that 52 percent of California voters approved in November. If the court upholds the measure, it must also decide how the proposition affects the marriages of about 18,000 same-sex couples who wed before the Nov. 4 election.

...Plaintiffs in the California lawsuits argue that Prop. 8 made such fundamental changes to the rights guaranteed by the state Constitution that it amounted to a constitutional revision, not merely an amendment. A revision requires approval by two-thirds of the Legislature or by delegates to a new state constitutional convention to reach the ballot.

Attorney General Jerry Brown, who ordinarily defends state laws in the courts, joined the opponents of Prop. 8 and argued that the voters lack the power to eliminate "inalienable rights."

It seems likely that the Court will not overturn the amendment-- and leave that for voters to do in the future-- but will leave the 18,000 couples who married while it was legal to remain married. We'll see.

On Thursday, however, a new bill was introduced in the U.S. Senate by Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) that promotes equality for all federal employees. Twenty-two senators, all Democrats, immediately signed on as co-sponsors-- Dan Akaka (HI), Barbara Boxer (CA), Sherrod Brown (OH), Maria Cantwell (WA), Ben Cardin (MD), Bob Casey (PA), Chris Dodd (CT), Dick Durbin (IL), Russ Feingold (WI), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Ted Kennedy (MA), John Kerry (MA), Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Patrick Leahy (VT), Carl Levin (MI), Jeff Merkley (OR), Barbara Mikulski (MD), Patty Murray (WA), Bernie Sanders (VT), Chuck Schumer (NY), Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), and Ron Wyden (OR).

The Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act would entitle all federal employees, no matter their sexual orientation, to the same employment and health care benefits as married couples. The areas covered by the law:

·         Employee Health Benefits
·         Family, medical and emergency leave
·         Retirement and disability
·         Group life insurance
·         Long-term care insurance
·         Death and disability benefits
·         Compensation for work injuries
·         Relocation, travel and related expenses

In explaining his participation to his constituents, Senator Merkley pointed out that Oregon and 15 other states already have identical laws on the books and that most of the Fortune 500 companies are already offering domestic partner benefits to their employees. “It is plain wrong that some federal employees are not currently entitled to equal health and employment benefits,” said Merkley. “This legislation will ensure that all federal employees, regardless of their sexual orientation, have access to employee health benefits, family and medical leave, compensation for work injuries, and the retirement and disability plans that are vital to the financial security of families... This bill is a step in the right direction to make sure that all Americans are compensated equally under the law. It is time for the federal government to stand up for fairness and ensure that all federal employees and their loved ones are treated the same.”
If your senator isn't on the list of co-sponsors, you might want to make a call. This is exactly the kind of bill the watch the response to. Members who should be on the list but who aren't:
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Roland Burris (D-IL)
Bob Menendez (D-NJ)
Jack Reed (D-RI)
Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Tom Udall (D-NM)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
John Tester (D-MT)
Mark Warner (D-VA)
Jim Webb (D-VA)
Kay Hagan (D-NC)
Bill Nelson (D-FL)
Harry Reid (D-NV)
Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
Arlen Specter (D-PA)
Mark Udall (D-CO)
Mark Begich (D-AK)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Ted Kaufman (DE)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Debbie Stabenow (MI)

Most the the GOP is expected to follow the lead of their closet queen leader, Mitch McConnell, and oppose the bill. It'll be interesting to see if Lindsey Graham's voice squeaks when he says "Nay."

Two Top Mormon Leaders Arrested-- None Of Their 22 Spouses Had Anything To Do With Gay Marriages Of Course

Mormon blasphemy holds Jesus was a polygamist

The Mormon cult has been in the news a lot lately, mostly as the instigator and financier of the vicious and bigoted attack on gay families in California. Seeking to bond with religious right extremists who have traditionally opposed polygamy, the Mormon's, like a punk hoodlum seeking to move up and become a Mafia "made" man, offered to lead the effort against gays in the battle over Proposition 8. The commotion was also a convenient smokescreen for questions about why more and more Mormons are falling back into the cult's old (and illegal) polygamous ways.

Polygamy has been an integral, if hidden, part of the Mormon cult since Joseph Smith (who had many secret wives) made the whole idiotic pseudo "religion" up in the 1830s. But it wasn't until crime figure Brigham Young (who had 51 wives, although he only impregnated 16 of them) made it official cult doctrine in 1852 that it was all out in the open. In order to cover up the fact that they were all a bunch of adulterous perverts, the cult founders made polygamy Mormon doctrine and it is still used by authoritarian Mormon males as a way of justifying immoral conduct with as many young girls-- often under age-- as they can get their paws on. Most Mormons are very secretive about their polygamous lifestyles although some of their sects practice it out in the open. The Republican Party has a pact with the Mormon leaders that if they keep it all quiet they'll be left alone.

After Abe Lincoln made polygamy officially illegal in 1862, Utah found itself unable to join the US as a state. Eventually Brigham Young, a psychotic and delusional mass murderer, vicious racist, and serial pervert, was tried for lewd and lascivious cohabitation. Eventually the Mormon cult "banned" polygamy, although it winks and nods while thousands of members continue leading polygamous lives.

Yesterday two demented top Mormon leaders in Canada, Jim Oler, 44, and Winston Blackmore, 52, were arrested and charged with polygamy. Their sect of the cult is connected to Mormon cults in Hildale, Utah, Eldorado, Texas, and Colorado City, Arizona. Both men call themselves "bishops" and Blackmore may also be guilty of statutory rape-- like his former pal, Mormon crazy Warren Jeffs (currently in prison)-- since some of his "wives" were under 18 when he "married" them.

Two top leaders of a polygamous community in western Canada have been arrested and charged with practicing polygamy, British Columbia's attorney general said Wednesday.

Attorney General Wally Oppal said Winston Blackmore is charged with marrying 20 women, while James Oler is accused of marrying two women. Oppal, who said the charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison, said the case will be the first test of Canada's polygamy laws.

"This has been a very complex issue," he said. "It's been with us for well over 20 years. The problem has always been the defense of religion has always been raised."

...[A Mormon spokesman said] "We believe that our religion is being discriminated against and that there are many government officials working with each other to carry out a vendetta of hatred and are determined to end our way of life."

If so-called "responsible" and law abiding Mormons, like GOP leader Mitt Romney, who still plans to capture the White House, want to show that their cult isn't a danger to society, perhaps they could divert some of the millions of dollars they are spending illegally to attack peaceful gay families and use it to clean up their own worldwide mess. Perhaps a serious educational crusade to bring Mormons into the 21st Century would be a better use of Mormon millions than using it to stoke the flames of bigotry and oppression.

Do You Know What State Is Afflicted With The Most Mormons? It's Not Utah

MC Flow

Breaking news: California AG Jerry Brown will urge the state's Supreme Court to void anti-gay Prop 8

IN BRIEF: "Brown, whose office requires him to defend state laws unless he cannot find reasonable legal grounds to do so, said after Prop. 8 passed Nov. 4 that he would support the initiative before the state's high court.

"But in a lengthy filing today, he argued that the measure was 'inconsistent with the guarantees of individual liberty' in California's governing charter."

From the San Francisco Chronicle's blog:

Brown asks state high court to overturn Prop. 8

Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, December 19, 2008

(12-19) 18:04 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- State Attorney General Jerry Brown, in a surprise turnabout, asked the state Supreme Court late today to overturn Proposition 8, saying the voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage violates basic rights guaranteed in the state Constitution.

Brown, whose office requires him to defend state laws unless he cannot find reasonable legal grounds to do so, said after Prop. 8 passed Nov. 4 that he would support the initiative before the state's high court.

But in a lengthy filing today, he argued that the measure was "inconsistent with the guarantees of individual liberty" in California's governing charter.

"Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification," Brown said.

The authors of the state Constitution, he said, did not intend "to put a group's right to enjoy liberty to a popular vote."

Hours earlier, sponsors of Prop. 8 filed arguments asking the court to uphold the ballot measure, which passed with a 52 percent majority. Andrew Pugno, attorney for the Yes on 8 campaign, said he was disappointed at Brown's stance.

"It's unfortunate that the attorney general would not do his duty to defend the will of the voters," Pugno said.

The pro-Prop. 8 brief was filed by Kenneth Starr, the former Whitewater special prosecutor and now dean of Pepperdine University law school. He argued that the court should preserve the people's lawmaking powers by upholding the initiative and invalidating 18,000 weddings performed before the election.

Prop. 8 "does not broadly seek to diminish or eliminate the constitutional or civil rights of gays and lesbians," but is simply "about restoring and maintaining the traditional definition of marriage," Starr said. Decades of legal precedents, he said, require "judges - as servants of the people, to bow to the will of those whom they serve."

The court ruled 4-3 on May 15 that California's ban on same-sex marriage violated the constitutional rights of gays and lesbians to marry the partner of their choice and discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation. Prop. 8 amended the state Constitution to overturn the ruling and declare that only marriage between a man and a woman is "valid or recognized in California."

The court is reviewing lawsuits filed by gay and lesbian couples and by an array of local governments, led by San Francisco, that contend that ballot measure exceeded the legal limits on initiatives by destroying fundamental rights and stripping judges of their authority to protect a historically persecuted minority.

Such profound changes, the plaintiffs argue, amount to a constitutional revision - not merely an amendment - and require a two-thirds legislative vote to reach the ballot.

The justices could hear the cases as early as March and would be required to rule within 90 days. Other interested parties on both sides are scheduled to submit written arguments Jan. 15.

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Prop 8: The Musical

Everyone's talking about this video. It's worth watching:

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Who Will The Mormon Bigots Attack Next?

Let me assume you're not gay. Instead you're something else. Anything else. You wear glasses. The legitimate government decides to single out everyone who wears glasses for special treatment, very unpleasant special treatment. What would you do? Would you band together with other eyeglass wearers and eyeglass wearer supporters and insist on equality? Or, you could just shut up and take off your eyeglasses and stumble around without being able to see as well. Sound far fetched? Idiotic? In 1976 the King of Cambodia turned over that country's government to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. The Khmer Rouge had a vision of an agrarian utopia that was harebrained and insane-- though not nearly as harebrained and insane as Mormonism. Anyone with eyeglasses-- and many with wristwatches-- were considered dangerous counter-revolutionary intellectuals who were different from the Khmer norm. Eventually all the eyeglass wearers were among the 2 million Cambodians who were killed.

Today marks the day American gays are standing up to the most backward and bigoted elements of American society, partially financed and led by an historically violent and perverted, Satanic cult known as Mormons. The Mormon cult leaders in their Salt Lake City lair directed an operation to undermine equality in California, pumping $20 million (perhaps $40 million) into a campaign of slanderous bigotry against peaceful gay families. Many peaceful gay families aren't feeling all that peaceful right now. Gay leaders are urging non-violence at all costs, although the Mormon cult leaders-- with no evidence whatsoever-- are claiming gays have sent them envelopes with white powder, a hoax that the vicious Mormon hierarchy claims are "acts of domestic terrorism against our supporters."

The Utah Pride Center, a gay rights group, put out its own statement calling the powder hoaxes and acts of vandalism "deplorable."

However, the group said, "It is false to conclude that yesterday's suspicious package came from gay protesters. Overwhelmingly, gay and allied Utahns have expressed their pain, frustration and commitment to securing rights through peaceful demonstrations and marches."

Today that premise will be tested everywhere in America... well, not everywhere, but in all these places in California-- and across every other state in the U.S. where there are gay people. And that means all 50 of them (as well as in other countries).

More sedentary gay folks are just joining the boycotts against those who financed the barrage of homophobic hatred against our families. Aside from the entire state of Utah, here's a list of businesses that have advocated homophobia by donating to the anti-gay agenda. Remember the Cambodians with eyeglasses... and the Jews. Let's not take this attack on us too passively.




UPDATE: REPORTS FROM AROUND THE COUNTRY

Calitics has a series of posts about the rallies from Seattle (photo on the right), Albuquerque, Sacramento, Chicago, San Diego, Santa Rosa, etc., as well as press coverage from New York, L.A., Houston, Dan Francisco... Anyone hear from Salt Lake City or any of the backward Mormon communities in the part of the country that voted for McCain?