Of course, America’s Taliban doesn’t believe in the Constitution, or laws, or judges. They only believe in their own beliefs. And if they believe it, it’s right. If you believe it, it’s wrong. And if you want to live in this country alongside them, you’d better worship their god in the exact manner they do, or they’ll destroy you.
That’s why we have a Constitution. To stop people like Maggie Gallagher.
They reject with every fiber of their beings the fact that they, the Religous Right, AKA America’s Taliban, are the ones on the wrong side of history, and that they are the ones fighting against uniquely American values, but as usual, the facts are not on their side. When it comes to the actual US Constitution, the actual Bill of Rights, and the actual American system, the Religious Right pretty much has a 100% record of being completely, utterly, insanely wrong.
In a later post today, Maggie basically conceded the Prop 8 trial. She’s clinging to hope that the Supreme Court is as stupid as the voters she targets in her campaigns of hate, and I’ll grant her that Clarence Thomas is, but I don’t think she should count her chickens.
This week, the Proposition 8 trial draws to a close.
This is the trial that never should have been, by a judge who has systematically telegraphed his sympathy for one side.
Boo hoo. Sorry about our whole “American system,” Maggie, but this is a civil rights battle, and they’re usually ultimately decided in the courts. As for the judge’s sympathy, it seems more like he’s systematically telegraphed his sympathy for factual analysis, and as the anti-gay side has been so pathetic that the creme de la creme expert witnesses brought in by the defense ended up helping the plaintiffs, it’s very obvious who has the facts on their side.
Did I mention that Maggie Gallagher’s piece is titled “The Core Civil Right to Vote For Marriage”? That’s rich. In Maggie’s world, giving the unwashed masses the right to vote to take away other peoples’ rights is, in itself, a civil right. A lot of white supremacists probably would agree vis a vis the Civil Rights Act, etc.
When I entered this debate in 2003, gay marriage advocates scoffed at the idea that a federal constitutional amendment was necessary. Now gay marriage advocates applaud as Ted Olson tells the world that our marriage laws are grounded only in hatred and bigotry, that they are akin to racism. Ted Olson’s team actually read Catholic and Baptist doctrine into the court record, to persuade the judge that to be a Christian is to be a bigot.
Oh, Gallagher, stop pretending that your extremist Catholic beliefs are in any way representative of Christendom, and stop co-opting the Baptists, who all think you’re a godless Mary-worshipping heathen.
I hope not. But that is the heart of the case against Prop 8: Gay marriage advocates believe there isn’t any difference between two men in a sexual union and a husband and wife, and those of us who see this difference are blinded by hatred and prejudice. They delegitimize opponents, brand us as haters, and then try to strip us of our rights.
*Taking a moment to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, think of nice things, Zen, calm, love*
WHAT F***ING RIGHTS HAVE GAY PEOPLE EVER TRIED TO TAKE AWAY FROM YOU, MAGGIE?!
*Breathing exercises did not work*
She is such a dishonest woman. It’s incredible.
For these Americans, gay marriage does not merely expand marriage to more people, it abolishes the historic core conception of marriage and replaces it with a new government-mandated genderless marriage. Gay marriage means that our maleness and femaleness does not matter, our capacity to create new life is irrelevant to the public project of marriage.
Said she whose son was born out of wedlock, and whose husband has never been seen at her side in this fight. I’m conjecturing here, but I almost wonder if Maggie has an awful, loveless marriage, and instead of trying to fix it through normal processes (or leave him), she’s taking it out on gay couples, hopelessly trying to bolster her own marriage by fighting for “traditional marriage” in the public square. It’s like she’s trying to atone for her own perceived failures in life by ruining everyone else’s life.
Anyway, for the rest of the piece, she blubbers on about this one time she was at a bar in Oakland and a lady was mean to her and told her she wasn’t welcome in the Bay Area, due to her filthy bigotry. Maggie, of course, pulls the “Who’s the real hater now!” card in response to this. Of course, the real hater is still Maggie Gallagher, because it doesn’t matter how “nice” she is to people, she’s still wasting her sad, pathetic life trying to break loving families apart, and it doesn’t matter how unkind the woman in the bar was to her, because the woman in the bar is standing up for principles, love, and for the equality of all human beings.
Then Maggie closes:
Ted Olson will talk in court this week like a civilized man. But Ted Olson, as much as any one man, is responsible for the idea that there is no real debate to be had about gay marriage, that all the legitimacy, all the arguments, all the good will and good reasons are on his side. He will be asking this judge to disrespect the views of his fellow Americans, to brand them ignorant, irrational and bigoted, and to take away our right to vote for marriage. And he will be bathed in applause for doing so.
Blubber blubber blubber. Some Americans ARE ignorant, irrational and bigoted. What of it?
Anyway, Maggie’s probably going to get more and more hysterical in the coming months and years, as the fight for full equality moves further into the courts, where it belonged in the first place, and away from the whims of the majority. As we’ve seen in the past, when it’s a matter of scaremongering and lying to ignorant people, the anti-gay side has a playbook that works well with older voters and the clinically insane. But when it’s a court of law, where facts are of the utmost importance, the anti-gay folks don’t know what the hell they’re doing, because they’re trying to defend something completely indefensible.
Over the past week or so, it’s been reported that Vaughn Walker, the judge in the Prop 8 trial, is gay. This shouldn’t matter, because those of us who understand how the judicial system works know that judges are charged with interpreting the law in light of the Constitution, and nothing more. Cries of “judishul activizms” from the Religious Right in gay rights cases are ringing more and more hollow, as straight white Republican-appointed judges around the nation are ruling in favor of our equality in increasing numbers. So, if Vaughn Walker rules in the plaintiffs’ favor in the Prop 8 trial, he’s simply joining a growing group of Republican appointees who agree that equal protection means equal protection for ALL American citizens. But of course, the Religious Right doesn’t see it this way.
So let’s tack off the Religious Right reactions to this revelation:
1. Matt Barber issued a hysterical press release, suggesting that Walker’s behavior during the trial has been “bizarre,” and that his (overturned) decision to allow cameras in the courtroom contributed to a “circus” atmosphere, which hurt the anti-gay side, because, like the cowards they are, they imagine themselves “victims” in the wake of the Prop 8 vote. Barber calls the judge’s sexuality a “conflict of interest,” because Matt Barber stubbornly and childishly clings to definitions of sexuality that have been disproven for decades. If I were being charitable, I would suggest that maybe all those years he spent groping and being groped by men in tight shorts resulted in some sort of long lasting head injury.
2. Brian Brown attempted to take a gentler approach, saying that regardless of whether Walker is gay or not, he’s still an “activist” judge, and that the deck has been stacked against the anti-gay side from the beginning. Apparently it hasn’t crossed his mind that the deck might have been stacked against bigotry and discrimination because reality is stacked against bigotry and discrimination.
3. Rick “Frothy Mix” Santorum farted out some sort of jumbled words where he claimed that Prop 8 voters had been harassed and blacklisted over their votes. The hysteria surrounding the aftermath of the Prop 8 vote would lead an uninformed observer to think there was some sort of bodycount among the Religious Right after that vote, but reality, of course, knows otherwise. Santorum also accused the judge of “rigging the trial.” Uh huh. TS at Instaputz replies, “It’s not every day that a former Senator accuses a Reagan and Bush-nominated federal judge of ‘rigging’ a trial.”
One need not rely on this disturbing item from NRO to conclude that American jurisprudence is in big trouble given the expanding number of judges who are, to use modern parlance, “openly gay” (which is to say: proudly practicing or inclined to practice perversion). If they regard their homosexuality as (part of) “who they are” and, by extension, view foes of homosexuality as akin to racists, it is difficult to imagine them being truly impartial on “gay”-related cases.
Having said that, given the ferocity with which many straight liberals promote homosexualist ideology today, there surely is plenty of left-wing judicial bias to go around without laying all or even most of the blame at the feet of America’ homosexual judges. A straight liberal who regards homosexuality as a pure “civil rights” issue is just as capable of being a reactionary, anti-religious bigot in his approach toward moral opponents of homosexuality as an openly homosexual judge.
Waaaah. Peter’s comment does start to expose the obvious problems with the Religious Right’s logic on this (he’s good for that, because he’s just not put together correctly). The NRO piece Peter links to is from Ed Whelan, and if you know NRO, you know it’s a fairly hysterical analysis, itself. These are the people, after all, who pay Kathryn Jean Lopez to fawn over 15 year old boys at anti-choice rallies and to mangle the English language on a daily basis, while Jonah Goldberg continues to suck at the teat of wingnut welfare, riding his mother Lucianne’s coattails all the way to the bank, writing columns about how global warming isn’t real because hey look, meteors! (For instance.)
Anyway, et cetera, et cetera, ad nauseam. I’m sure there are many more Religious Right luminaries going through the roof over this, and if you really want to know, may I suggest Google, but I personally can take only so much of their garbage before my brain cells start feeling threatened.
If you have a working brain, you already know the obvious flaw in the Religious Right’s logic. If being part of a minority group disqualifies a judge from presiding over any cases involving that minority group, then judges would have to recuse themselves from so many cases that our system would fall apart. For instance, Scalia would have to shut it, forever, about anything involving the Catholic Church. And again, this betrays a willful refusal to understand what the judicial system IS. I have no idea whether or not these Religious Right figures actually do understand what judges do — I mean, come on, we’re dealing with people who think Liberty is a real law school, for god’s sake — but their public stance is obviously to misinform an already civics-stupid culture about the role of judges in our society, because Religious Right figures don’t value the American system of governance like the rest of us do.
I could go on, but John Aravosis already smacked them all down quite thoroughly, so I’ll just excerpt what he said, and then you should click the clicky to read the rest:
If a gay judge is unfit to rule on a case involving gay people or the religious right, then using the far right’s logic, a straight judge would be just as biased towards straight people in any anti-gay discrimination case. But it’s worse than that. African-American judges would never be able to rule on civil rights cases – well, no one would really, since every human being is a member of at least one race, thus, under the religious right’s logic, we’d all either be a minority or the majority, making us a party to any civil rights suit. (Or perhaps Latino judges would be able to rule on discrimination cases involving African-Americans, it’s not entirely clear.) And Republican judges clearly couldn’t rule on political cases, nor could Democratic judges. Which means the entire Supreme Court, the entire federal judiciary, and really any judge who ever voted or who has any political views whatsoever, is ineligible from any case that involves politics. And female judges couldn’t preside over cases involving women, or men I guess, and so on.
And in fact, the religious right’s logic, to its illogical conclusion, means that conservative Christian judges also would not be permitted to preside over any case involving gays, non-Christians, Christians who aren’t members of some religious right sect, cases involving politics (since the religious right became a de facto subsidiary of the Republican party decades ago), cases involving discrimination (since the lead religious right groups routinely promote bigotry – in fact, their raison d’etre is to promote bigotry), any case in which a black person is involved (the religious right used to use the Bible to justify slavery (and still think slavery was a good thing for blacks), and the Mormons excluded blacks from the upper levels of their church up until the 1970s), and lots of other issues. And let’s not forget that the Southern Baptists were formed because they split with the north over slavery – the SB’s were for it. But hey, they apologized…. in 2009.
But see, they don’t actually believe that. The Religious Right, incorrectly, thinks that they should have an elevated place in society. They have done nothing to deserve that place, and in fact, have been a solid stain on American history, but they’ve convinced themselves otherwise. There is no “logic” to speak of in their statements. No, they believe, in general, that they should be the final arbiters of all law in this country, in direct contravention of the actual American system, which guarantees us freedom from the tyrannical notions of bigoted, white male supremacist fundamentalist religion. And as their numbers continue to decrease with each passing year, pronouncements of this sort will become more and more extremist. The good news is that the American public is greeting these statements more and more with a collective yawn of boredom.
I spoke directly to Maggie Gallagher in my post below, about the true meaning of compassion and tolerance. I hope she reads it.
News has come out, though, that Maine’s ethics commission has denied the National Organization for Marriage’s (NOM) request that an investigation into their finances be delayed until the federal Proposition 8 case is decided in California. Their mere request for the delay is telling, which leads us to watch this investigation with keen interest.
Teddy Partridge has been faithfully liveblogging the Prop 8 trial for FireDogLake, and tonight he posted this, on the eve of another week of proceedings:
[T]he thing that has sustained me, what’ kept me going, what’ made it all worthwhile as I sit in the 19th floor Ceremonial Courtroom day after day typing, typing, mistyping ‚Äî is the laughter. The laughter rings out among those of us in the room there to hear our lives weighed in the balance, when an absurdity issues from the counsel for the defendant-intervenors, or their withdrawn expert witness depositions replayed on tape, or the defendant-intervenors: that gays are 12 times more likely to molest little children; that gay marriage leads to polygamy, incest and bestiality; that children are confused that a prince can marry a prince. That socially liberal countries that have legalized same sex marriage now have more divorce among opposite sex couples, and that one caused the other.
While there have been tears in the courtroom as we listen to the Plaintiffs tell their stories and the witnesses provide their experience and expertise, it’ the laughter that has meant the most to me. Because if a political movement is mocked and laughed at for its absurd notions and fundamental unfairness, it cannot last long. If its notions simply defy logic and elicit laughter and mockery from fair-minded people, and if its central tenet is one that people really don’t care about very much, then it isn’t going to make headway for very long.
And it simply will not fly, this denying marriage to people who love one another.
When our opposition laughs, it is the ignorant guffaw of those who strive to deny the reality in front of them. I know this laugh well. I grew up around this laugh.
But when we laugh, as LGBT people and fair-minded supporters of all creeds, colors, and what have you, it’s the uncontrollable “you must be kidding me!” giggle of those who know better.
That’s part of the reason I mock some of our foes so much. They’re simply too ridiculous to be met on the merits of their arguments, because their arguments are without merit!
A Colorado gay man is testifying in a federal same-sex marriage trial about his experience undergoing so-called “reversal therapy” that attempted to change his sexual orientation.
Lawyers for two same-sex couples suing to overturn California‘s gay marriage ban called 26-year-old Ryan Kendall to the witness stand to demonstrate that a person’s sexual orientation cannot usually be changed.
The point is central to their effort to show that gays deserve special protections from discrimination under the U.S. Constitution.
Kendall said the therapy he underwent at the insistence of his parents while a teenager drove him to the brink of suicide and did nothing to turn him into a heterosexual.
A lawyer for the ban’s sponsors objected to Kendall being allowed to testify, saying it’s irrelevant to the legal issues in the case.
These videos, aired this morning in the Prop 8 trial, are damning to our opposition. The brief backstory is that these were defense witnesses who gave sworn depositions, and whom the defense withdrew over concerns that the trial was going to be videotaped. At least that’s what they said. From what I can see, the anti-gay side was probably more motivated by the fact that their own witnesses undermined their entire case. That’s what happens when anti-gay forces have to go under oath. They have no legal basis for their beliefs. All they have is anti-gay animus.
Once again, these arguments are being made by experts originally called by the proponents of Proposition 8.
(!!!)
Katherine Young:
Paul Nathanson:
If you can’t watch video for some reason, the transcripts are here (Young) and here (Nathanson).
In the big Prop 8 trial in California, President Barack Obama’s position against marriage equality is directly harming our community and being thrown in our faces.
Our opponents are saying, “Mr. Obama is not a bigot and he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman. So, how can the proponents of Prop 8 be bigots if they share the same views as the President?”
Well, actually he is a politician who believes in getting elected.
During his run for Illinois state Senate in 1996, Barack Obama stated his unequivocal support for marriage equality, according to an exclusive story in the Jan. 14, 2009 Windy City Times newspaper:
President-elect Obama’s answer to a 1996 Outlines newspaper question on marriage was: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” There was no use of the phrase “civil unions”.
It seems the Windy City Times showed that Obama is a pol with his finger in the wind on this issue.
LGBT groups, including Truth Wins Out, want Obama to take a stand on the Prop 8 trial. Equality California said Friday that it has collected 91,000 signatures on a petition urging the president to file a brief supporting a challenge to the measure. The White House has not responded. (typical)
Mr. Obama, it is time to get off the sidelines. It is time to stand up and do what it right. We are not holding our breath. But, for once, will you please surprise us? The right wing hates you anyway. They think you are a communist and some even hold the view that you are an illegal alien or the anti-Christ.
You will never win over these crazy, irrational people.Never. Ever.
Please, stop trying to do so. If a person hates LGBT people, they are likely not voting for you anyway. Don’t you get it?
As the Tea Party gains prominence, it almost assures that your 2012 Republican opponent (maybe Sarah Palin or Sen. Jim DeMint) will overwhelmingly win the fringe vote. So, why not do what is moral and just, by rallying the people who actually care about your presidency and support you?
We are waiting, Mr. President, and so far we are pained by your silence. Your words are being used as a justification for our oppression. Only you can change this.
Today, the trial against Proposition 8 included a lot of expert testimony on the history of marriage, and on the long, shameful history of discrimination against the gay community in the United States (click here for detailed liveblogs). The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) has been live-tweeting the trial, and reported that a film from the 1950′s by the name of “Boys Beware” was introduced as evidence of said discrimination. Well, here’s that video. It’s fairly grotesque, I’ll warn you. It has all the hallmarks of the “vintage educational film”: the father-knows-best narrator, the ridiculous music, etc. But in this video, instead of teaching kids to duck and cover or whatever, we’re told about the threat of the “homosexual” as child predator. Viewed through the lens of sanity in the year 2010, you might feel like you’re watching something produced by The Onion. That we’ve come as far as we have from those days is the good news. The bad news is that there are still people in this country who secretly still believe this sort of crap, and they have no qualms about vilifying the LGBT community with similar smears. I wrote earlier about the Atwater-ization of anti-gay bigotry, and that applies here. In the 1950′s, it was “protect your children from the homosexual predator.” Now it’s simply “protect the children” from gay marriage. All the bigots have really done is amended the text, but it still sounds the dogwhistle for a certain ignorant, uneducated segment of the populace.
Here’s a round-up of reactions to and accounts of the first day of the historic federal trial against Proposition 8:
Karen Ocamb at LGBT POV wrote a great piece on the news that really didn’t get reported, including some of her own observations about the general mood of the proceedings. Her entire blog is actually a great resource.
“Judge Walker: If the President’ parents had been in Virginia when he was born, their marriage would have been unlawful. Doesn’t that show a tremendous change in the institution of marriage?”
“Cooper: Racial restrictions were never a feature of the institution of marriage. [Laughter in our courtroom.]
Wow. Choire goes so far as to say that, based on that exchange alone, Cooper “is going to get his ass handed to him.” We’re crossing our fingers! The actions of the opposition (going insane over the proceedings being recorded, witnesses dropping like flies, losing it over the discovery process, etc.) lead me to believe that we’re about to see just how unprepared our opponents really are, in attempting to defend their indefensible positions in grown-up court. It’s one thing to use lies and insinuations to scare people, but being under oath and being asked to prove your assertions, is a different animal.
Also, from what I can see, the testimonials from the plaintiffs, i.e. the actual couples involved, were quite powerful. It would be amazing to see them on, AHEM!, YouTube.
What makes the suit even more unique is that the state of California is a defendant in name only. California refused to defend Prop8′ validity, and the attorney general filed an amicus brief… for the plaintiffs. The suit’ only real defendants are intervenors, private citizens with a glancing bystander’ interest in the litigation, from an organization calling itself “Protect Marriage.” They’re fighting tooth and nail, to the point of tossing out television cameras forcefully(query why they think that little bit necessary), to preserve their right to be free, apparently, from squeamishness about other peoples’ relationships. The intervenors have no real stake in the outcome of the case. If they win, they get nothing but a sense of satisfaction. If they lose, they may, one day, shiver to see two men, hand-in-hand and wearing wedding bands.
Elsewhere in his piece, we find that he’s a bit queasy about the idea of taking this case all the way to the Supreme Court. I agree and, yet, I disagree. But that’s just me, being of two minds again.
If you’d like to read what the anti-gay “thinkers” have to say to this, Maggie Gallagher is holding court in the bathtub with K-Lo, occasionally spittling out a few words at The Corner at National Review Online.
And that’s all I’ve got for now. If you want to follow today’s proceedings in real time, here are the key people tweeting the trial:
Dan Levine, a reporter for legal news publication The Recorder can be followed @FedcourtJunkie. Also NCLR’ Ilona Turner @ilona, The Advocate @TheAdvocateMag, American Foundation for Equal Rights,@AmerEqualRights , and the ACLU of Northern California@ACLU_NorCal are all live tweeting. The Courage Campaign is also tweeting the trial at @CourageCampaign.
In the big Prop 8 trial in California, President Barack Obama’s position against marriage equality is directly 
