Prop 8’s Day In Federal Court Starts Today

I usually avoid discussion of certain issues, such as gay marriage, because they are not really hot button issues with me. Furthermore, while, if pressed, I do not support gay marriage, I do support civil unions, and, this being America, where freedom should reign supreme, and, with a Classical Liberal doctrine of “if it doesn’t affect me, why should I care?”, gays should have a legal right to be recognized as paired under the law. But, I do have a big problem with people making up civil rights and pretending that the Constitution gives them those, and, attempting to thwart the will of the People through judicial activism

After a run of setbacks at the state level, gay rights advocates will take the campaign for same-sex marriage into a federal courtroom on Monday, starting down a treacherous avenue that ends at a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by conservatives.

Two couples are asking Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker to rule that same-sex marriage is a right embedded in the Constitution, and that it was violated last year when California voters passed a ballot measure confining matrimony to members of the opposite sex.

Can anyone say what, exactly, that embedded right is? Like with so many things, rights just seem to appear somewhere in the Constitution out of thing air, but, no one can actually pin them down or highlight them in actual specific words. However, I can pin down a section which allows a State to enact laws such as Prop 8, where the Federal government needs to butt out, Amendment 10.

“From a conservative standpoint, people who wish to enter into the institution of marriage wish to enter into something that is the building block of our society, and that is itself a conservative value,” said Olson, who served as solicitor general under President George W. Bush.

But, marriage is a religious doctrine first and foremost which is about the joining of a Man and a Woman together under the Lord’s eye. And, let’s not forget, quite a few on the liberal side voted in favor of Proposition 8, which is the reason it passed.

Over at the NY Times, they actually allow Edwin Meese III to write an op-ed piece against this lawsuit

THE much-anticipated trial to determine the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 is scheduled to begin this morning in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. What’s at stake in this case, filed in federal district court in San Francisco on behalf of two gay couples, is not just the right of California voters to reaffirm the definition of marriage as only between a man and a woman, but also whether marriage may be otherwise defined in any state.

What he is pointing too, of course, is the further erosion of 10th Amendment Rights. Anyhow, what is your opinion?

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4 Responses to “Prop 8’s Day In Federal Court Starts Today”

  1. TFMo says:

    Marriage is a religious institution. That’s where it started, that’s what it is. And religion is the purview of the various churches.

    The separation of church and state, despite what the left would have us believe, is NOT to keep religion from influencing government, but to keep government from inflicting its will on religion. Which only makes sense, considering how many of the first settlers here left England for that reason.

    To make gay marriage legal, the government would have to impose its will on the church; telling the church you MUST allow this ceremony and you MUST recognize this union as legitimate. That’s a violation of the First Amendment, in that all three of the major religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, consider homosexuality a sin.

    Imposing a gay marriage demand on a church is nothing less than the government attempting to rewrite religious dogma, and that is not our government’s job.

    In the interest of fairness, there is a compromise: civil unions. A non-religious way for gays to be “married.” Gays get what they want, and churches are not forced to condone and encourage sin.

    As an aside, I notice that no one is trying to force mosques to start having gay marriages; mostly just Christian churches.

  2. Trish says:

    I agree with TFMo on this, and with you Teach.
    Civil unions, and provisions to file jointly as a couple for tax and insurance bennies, should be allowed, while leaving the term marriage to designate what it has meant for time and memorial, that of a union between one man & one woman.
    The hue and cry for gays to be allowed to get married is political, and those who are trying to forward the agenda are doing so to force states to give in to a small minority population, which is dead wrong in my opinion.
    The people in CA voted, but that wasn’t good enough, because they didn’t vote the way liberals and gays wanted them to! BS I call!

  3. mojo says:

    I thing Judge Walker should be disciplined for trying to put his dog and pony show on Youtube.

  4. Some seriously excellent points, TFMo!

    You are quite right about it being political, Trish. The far left demands Direct Democracy, but, when they lose? They whine.

    True, mojo. From what I read briefly, SCOTUS put a stop to that.

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