Bye Bye Proposition 8!
The drawn-out battle over gay and lesbian marriage in California has been extended for another week after a federal judge kept same-sex unions on hold to give opponents the chance to appeal to a higher court.
Dozens of gay couples who had spent hours standing outside City Hall in San Francisco hoping to see an immediate resumption of marriages had their hopes dashed, at least until 5pm on 18 August when Judge Vaughn Walker has ordered the ban on the ceremonies to be lifted.
Liberty Counsel however resolutely opposed Judge Walker’s refusal to stay his ruling:
Mathew Staver, Founder of Liberty Counsel and Dean of Liberty University School of Law, commented: “It is outrageous that Judge Walker refused to stay his ruling. This is a classic example of radical individualism and judicial activism. Judge Walker obviously has not learned the lesson of 2008, when the California Supreme Court refused to stay its decision on marriage. That decision was reversed in short order, but it caused a huge disruption. Staying the effect of Judge Walker’s ruling pending the appeal is the only logical thing to do in this case. This case has a high probability of being overturned on appeal. It makes no sense for one person to set aside a state constitutional amendment, radically change the longstanding status quo, and then later be reversed. The disruption will be enormous if this decision is not stayed. In the end, the commonsense and constitutional definition of marriage as one man and one woman will be upheld.”
It’s shocking that an educator in the law should talk with such brazen, discriminatory language, but there you are. And they’re not alone:
“Voters in 30 states have protected marriage in their state constitutions because they understand the importance of a mom and a dad to children. The social science data is overwhelming and clear – children do best when raised by a mom and dad. Judge Walker’s opinion completely stepped over these findings by the international research community.”
The Family Research Council has a thing against homosexuality. They have a habit of distorting statistics, lying and blaming gay people for the homophobia they face, but of course they are as adept as all Christianist extremists in doing what we’re all doing on the ‘net – presenting our own truths. We are truly in a postmodern era, where we’re almost destined to suffer an innumerable number of competing ‘truths’ – the Internet is the biggest bully pulpit after all, and the zealous have learned how to take steadfast positions in debates over issues such as homosexuality by playing our game – using facts. It means little to them that they make them up – how many people duped by their ‘facts’ would be likely to do the necessary research to debunk them? But let me address just one here.
It is indeed important to have a mother and a father, but the evidence from children’s own experiences has overwhelmingly shown that children do best when raised by good parents. The gender balance doesn’t determine outcomes for children – that’s far more down to all sorts of other variables like social class. You’ll find the FRC’s ‘international research community’ will be overwhelmingly religiously extreme and homophobic – no big shocker that they should suggest homosexuality is detrimental to good parenting, but of course they also ignore the fact that people don’t get married just to have children. It’s quite amusing for them to want now to uphold Prop 8 to ‘protect children’ when numerous gay marriages will never end up with any, but these people are unable to think for themselves.
It’s a good thing that licences are back being issued to same-sex relationships in California. It’s a better thing that marriages will resume on Wednesday. I hope very much, on the very non-discrimination grounds which Prop 8 was struck back down with, that things stay that way in that overwhelmingly important constituency. Religious zealots need to learn once and for all that just because they have ‘sacred texts’, whether they interpret them properly or not, they don’t have the right to discriminate against people different to them. In the 21st century we’re governed by Enlightenment principles and civil law – the rights of individuals trump ‘God”s law every single bloody time.
I am a gay man, and am married to another man. If you’re a heterosexual Christianist that doesn’t affect you or your marriage in any way whatsoever. Get over it.
