In case you didn’t hear this when it came out late yesterday:

A federal appeals court Wednesday authorized the televising of a Dec. 6 hearing on whether Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage, should be struck down.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by C-SPAN to broadcast the two-hour hearing, which is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. The court said C-SPAN would provide its tape to other broadcast media that receive court permission to televise the hearing.

The 9th Circuit is hearing an appeal of an August ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who presided over a trial that examined such questions as whether homosexuality could be changed and whether same-sex parenting harmed children. Walker wanted to broadcast the trial on the Internet, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 to ban cameras on the grounds that witnesses could be intimidated during testimony.

So that’s cool.

This one was a squeaker for the very pro-gay Kamala Harris, who has vowed not to defend Proposition 8, but Harris’s campaign has declared victory:

Kamala Harris’s campaign has declared victory after a narrow race between her and Republican Steve Cooley to become California’s next attorney general. According to a press release from campaign spokesperson Ace Smith, “uncounted ballots will only bolster Kamala Harris’s lead… the provisional ballots cast on Tuesday will reflect Harris’s victory.”

Harris has vowed to let Proposition 8 die in a federal appeals court. Cooley had said he would support California’s initiative banning same-sex marriage. Oral arguments in the case begin December 6 — the current governor and attorney general of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger and incoming governor Jerry Brown, are refusing to defend the antigay ballot initiative. It can only bolster the case of attorney Ted Olson, leading the case against Prop. 8, that the state’s incoming executives also do not support the proposition.

So there are silver linings to be found in Tuesday’s atrocious election.

Focus on the Family today misinformed its readers about legal background to the Ninth Circuit ruling in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger against Proposition 8.

Instead of citing the actual ruling, Focus lawyer Bruce Hausknecht parroted ProtectMarriage.org’s hasty rationale for a stay. Hausknecht is most interested in the stay request’s reference to Adams v. Howerton, a 1982 immigration case involving a same-sex couple that was based not upon federal family law, but upon a 1952 immigration law’s definition of foreign spouse.

Seeing a flimsy opportunity for profit, Focus breathlessly concludes:

Apparently, the 9th Circuit has already decided as a matter of law that there is a “rational basis” for a duly-enacted law that favors heterosexual marriage over homosexual marriage.

In short, Hausknecht parrots a false precedent from a sister political organization’s distortion of an unrelated field of law, and presents the antiquated distortion of history as if it were accepted case law.

Hausknecht then insinuates that Judge Vaughn Walker has recklessly ignored immigration rulings that Focus incompetently claims are “binding” upon U.S. citizens — and that may well be found unconstitutional, as U.S. society has become less bigoted against citizen women, blacks, religious minorities, and legal immigrants since 1952.

Focus on the Family clearly wishes it were still 1952, when all people were equal — but only if they were white, male, Christian, and of European descent. Maybe if they close their eyes, open their wallets, pray in “tongues,” and shout such irrational pseudo-legal babble loud enough, then a miracle will happen, their wallets will fill up, and it will be 1952 when they open their eyes.

Crazier things have happened.

Oh. Wait. No, they haven’t.

U.S. Catholic bishops and CNSNews.com declared today that they had “refuted” the Ninth Circuit federal ruling on the constitutionality of Californians’ equal access to civil institutions such as marriage.

The bishops consistently argued that facts are less important in a court of law than “faith” and evidence-free “reason” (prejudice).

Cardinal Francis George, head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), rejected [Judge Vaughn] Walker’s claims, stating that “no court of civil law has the authority to reach into areas of human experience that nature itself has defined.”

The Aug. 4 ruling, which the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put an emergency stay on this week, stated that, “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.”

With this statement, the bishops lied about the core reasoning of the ruling, which was:

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.

The bishops didn’t stop there. Mary Ann Walsh, spokeswoman for the bishops, said in an e-mail to CNSNews.com that “Judge Walker, in his decision, backed his bigotry with errors, including the misstatement that the ‘Catholic Church views homosexuality as sinful.’ The fact is, the Catholic Church sees homosexuality as a condition, an inclination in a person, something not intrinsically sinful.”

According to Walsh, Catholic autocrats are unbigoted for imposing their antigay prejudices upon all the civil institutions that couples of all faiths or no faith may require — and meanwhile, Walsh contends, courts that defend civil law and constitutional equality are bigoted for rejecting false Catholic claims to authority over civil society and for rejecting Catholic false distinctions between sin and supposedly-unholy-disorders-that-cause-one-to-sin. The spokeswoman is also quoted projecting the bishops’ own desire to “upend the U.S. Constitution” onto the targets of the bishops’ bigotry.

Among other highlights of the CNS press release:

• Francis de Rosa, a Virginia church administrator, attaches a qualifier to human rights, arguing that no one has the “special” right to be who they are, if that happens to be “gay.” de Rosa further argues that material facts are unnecessary in a court of law — only a politically correct faith and factually unsupported “reason” (theology) are required: “Vaughn Walker’s ruling asserts that the Catholic argument against homosexual acts is without a ‘rational basis,’ yet that teaching is not based solely upon principles of faith. It is certainly possible to argue from pure reason that it is against the nature of the human person to engage in homosexuality.”
  Without a shred of evidence, de Rosa and other bishops falsely state — only when not under oath — that “homosexuality is a pyscho-sexual disorder that harms the person and society.”
• Without a single study in existence to support his claim, William Donahue of the Catholic League chimes in — falsely stating, “All the psychological data show that children need a father and a mother” — no matter how abusive, incompetent, or unavailable said pairs happen to be.
• Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, makes the heretical suggestion that perhaps voters — not the Vatican — can somehow define marriage for Catholics and every other faith. “Citizens of this nation have uniformly voted to uphold the understanding of marriage as a union of one man and one woman in every jurisdiction where the issue has been on the ballot.”
• Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, California, projects his own “hysteria” onto the Northern California federal circuit.

Joe Jervis’s source has confirmed it.  Judge Vaughn Walker has denied the motion to stay judgment pending the appeals process, which means we can get gay married again, so there you have it.

UPDATE: The order is up.  The stay is lifted, but on hold until August 18, and it’s being turned over to the appeals court, who will likely deny a motion to stay the judgment.

This morning, I read New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s meandering and incoherent op-ed, “The Marriage Ideal”. It may have been the worst column written in the history of newspaper, and maybe dating back to stone tablets.

Douthat begins by pretending to be fair. He deftly debunks the baseless arguments used by opponents of marriage equality. He points out that “traditional marriage” is not universal across societies worldwide and that monogamy may be the exception, rather than the rule.

Next, Douthat writes that heterosexuals have generally screwed up the institution of monogamous, life-long marriage by participating in “less idealistic” no fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

Having said that, Douthat gives condescending lip service that feigns respect for gay relationships, but concludes that separate-but-equal treatment is the only way to preserve the heterosexual marriage “ideal”.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. The lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights. And a culture in which weddings are optional celebrations of romantic love, only tangentially connected to procreation, has no business discriminating against the love of homosexuals.

But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.

What a bizarre conclusion.

I call this the “Jesus Christ argument” to prohibit marriage equality. Douthat is basically saying that the constitutional rights and personal dreams of gay couples, although noble, must sacrificed at the altar to repent for heterosexual sins against the institution of marriage.

If society just stops marriage equality, all the heterosexuals who carelessly trample over marriage will miraculously change their ways over time. Thanks to the sacrifice of the good ole gays, there will be a resurgence of the marriage “ideal”.

Give me a break.

What bothers me is that Douthat printed this drivel without looking at real life examples of places that already have marriage equality. There is the District of Columbia and five states — Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut — where LGBT couples can already marry. All of these places are within a short drive from New York City, so Douthat could have jumped in the car and seen for himself that the affect on heterosexual marriage is nil. Instead, Douthat makes erroneous assumptions without a shred of evidence to support his conclusion.

The truth is, a gay couple marrying does nothing to influence or impact what happens to the heterosexual couple next door. Douthat’s absurd column was nothing more than a slippery attempt to assert heterosexual supremacy. But, it was written in a milquetoast and pseudo-intellectual way so he wouldn’t be scorned as a bigot by gays and enlightened heterosexuals at fancy New York cocktail parties.

What a sad, transparent attempt to justify discrimination. Who does he think he’s fooling?

Maureen Dowd:

Everything about the climax of the legal quest to overturn California’ ban on gay marriage was appropriately cinematic ‚Äî even the month best to imagine two men atop a wedding cake or two women walking down the aisle.

“It may be appropriate that the case is coming to closing argument now,” Chief Judge Vaughn Walker said with a twinkle. “June is, after all, the month for weddings.”

AP writer Lisa Leff reports on Mayor Jerry Sanders’ testimony in the Prop 8 trial in the mayor’s hometown newspaper, The San Diego Union-Tribune:

The mayor of San Diego testified Tuesday that his views on same-sex marriage evolved after he learned one of his daughters was a lesbian.

Mayor Jerry Sanders took the witness stand on behalf of two same-sex couples suing to overturn Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban.

“I had been prejudiced,” he said. “I was saying one group of people did not deserve the same respect, did not deserve the same symbolism of marriage, and I was saying their marriages were less important than those of heterosexuals.”

During Sanders’ testimony this morning, the video of the Republican mayor’s reversal of his position on marriage equality was played.

During an emotion-laden press conference in 2007, Sanders revealed that several members of his staff and his daughter, Lisa, are gay. Said the Mayor, “In the end, I could not look any of them in the face and tell them that their relationships ‚Äî their very lives ‚Äî were any less meaningful than the marriage that I share with my wife, Rana.”

When San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera asked Sanders why he was so emotional in the video, Sanders replied, “I felt I came very close to making a bad decision. I came very close to showing the prejudice I obviously had toward my daughter to my staff and to the people of San Diego.”

“If government tolerates discrimination against anyone it is very easy for citizens to do the same thing,” said Sanders.

Pro-Prop 8 attorney Brian Raum seemed intent on convincing Sanders that his earlier position in support of civil unions was not a hostile one and didn’t communicate hatred toward the LGBT community ‚Äî the crux of the trial.

Sanders replied, “I feel like my thoughts were grounded in prejudice, but I don’t feel like I communicated hatred.”

In March 2009, during the city’ Eve of Justice rally the night before the California Supreme Court began considering Proposition 8, Mayor Saunders announced the engagement of his daughter, Lisa Sanders, to her partner, Meaghan Yaple. They were married by a justice of the peace in Vermont last December.

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.

If you’re an anti-gay pastor watcher like me, you’re well aware that San Diego area radical clerics Miles McPherson and Jim Garlow relish both the spotlight and the media attention that comes hand-in-hand with being two of California’s better known anti-LGBT advocates.

When he’s not mentoring young Christians like former beauty queen turned soft-porn celebrity Carrie Prejean, Pastor McPherson of San Diego’s Rock Church is happy to take the stage to preach against LGBT rights, as he did in November 2008 at TheCall ‚Äî an anti-marriage-equality extravaganza held at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego shortly before the 2008 election. McPherson, according to Jeremy Hooper, writing at the Good As You blog, claimed “he and his followers are not ‘freaks’ who hate gays. They are really exterminators called upon to rid the world of satanic roaches.”
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