CA Supreme Court Usurps Democracy, Imposes Same-Sex “Marriage”
May 19th, 2008 by Peter
The bad news is that our “robed masters” in CA have imposed same-sex “marriage” on that state by judicial fiat. The good news is that freedom-loving citizens are fighting back, led in part by someone well-known to us:
SAN FRANCISCO — – With its declaration Thursday that gay couples can marry, California’s Supreme Court delivered a monumental but perhaps short-lived victory to the gay rights movement that is likely to resonate on the campaign trail.
The court’s order becomes final in 30 days, and it told county clerks and registrars to prepare. But the window could close soon afterward — religious and social conservatives are pressing to put a constitutional amendment on the state ballot in November that would undo the ruling and ban gay marriage.
“These out-of-touch judges will not have the last word on marriage,” said Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage California.
The court’s decision is likely to re-energize an election-year debate over same-sex marriages and gay rights. By injecting the social issue into a contest that has been dominated by the economy and Iraq, the ruling could provoke a backlash among conservatives, drawing them to the polls in large numbers.
The Courant’s editorial board weighed in yesterday, admitting its own cluelessness:
Opponents of the ruling see it as another attack on family life. James Dobson, chairman of the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, said, “It will be up to the people of California to preserve traditional marriage by passing a constitutional amendment. Only then can they protect themselves from this latest example of judicial tyranny.”
Preserve? Protect? Tyranny? We don’t understand that argument.
No kidding. You can tell the Courant’s editors all you want about Boston Catholic Charities being forced out of providing adoptions because of same-sex “marriage”, the New Jersey Methodist Church that lost its tax-exempt status for refusing to rent its beachfront pavilion for a lesbian civil union ceremony, and on and on…and all you will get in response is the editorial equivalent of a blank stare.
I have been inundated with media inquiries seeking the local angle:
”I think it very likely that the Kerrigan court will probably follow what the California court did and impose same-sex marriage on Connecticut by judicial fiat,” said Peter Wolfgang, the executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, a key mobilizer of sentiment against both the civil union law and the marriage bill that passed the Judiciary Committee last year.
Wolfgang’s group is asking for votes this fall for a constitutional convention. If one is approved by voters – the question is posed every 20 years on state ballots – the Family Institute will seek to create ballot initiative lawmaking in Connecticut, allowing the public to approve or reject laws like the marriage statute at referendum.
There is a lot to be said on this. Watch this space and your in-box for further information.
Here are some excerpts from an excellent column in today’s http://www.townhall.com, called “Gay Rights vs. Democracy” by Dinesh D’Souza:
“It is the essence of democracy that people should be able to decide the moral rules that govern the nature of a community. If people don’t have that power, then they are living under an autocracy.”
“How, then, can a court invalidate the referendum and over-rule the will of the people? Basically through a kind of legal fraud. The court has to pretend that there is a right to gay marriage even though it is nowhere evident in the state constitution.”
“But states have a legitimate right to define marriage. State legislatures, drawing on tradition and appealing to the values of their constituents, have defined marriage in a very particular way.”
“Now gay activists, with the acquiescence of the California high court, want to remove one of the criteria of marriage while keeping all the rest.”…”It’s ***unreasonable to say that gays have a constitutional right to over-ride the definition but other groups do not. The court’s real justification seems to have little to do with constitutional reasoning and everything to do with an assertion of political power.***
****Political power has its place, and that place is in the legislative and executive domain. So in the California high court decision, we see liberal jurisprudence subverting the legislature and the will of the people in order to achieve its ideological agenda. This is not about whether you think gays should be allowed to marry. If you think they should, go ahead and vote for candidates who support gay marriage. But you should still oppose the manufacture of bogus rights in order to reach a result that democracy would not by itself allow.”
****Political power has its place, and that place is in the legislative and executive domain. So in the California high court decision, we see liberal jurisprudence subverting the legislature and the will of the people in order to achieve its ideological agenda. This is not about whether you think gays should be allowed to marry. If you think they should, go ahead and vote for candidates who support gay marriage. But you should still oppose the manufacture of bogus rights in order to reach a result that democracy would not by itself allow.”
The California legislature passed gay marriage multiple times — Schwarzenegger vetoed it, saying that the courts should make the ruling, and that he would uphold their decision.
Also, we as citizens have every right imaginable unless we are explicitly banned from having it. Unless you live in a country other than the U.S.A., of course.
Try reading the federalist papers on the role of the judiciary to prevent the “tyranny of majority.”
I’ll say it again, the courts have no right mandating legislation from the bench. If a governor vetoes a bill, the legislature can override the veto with two-thirds majority vote. If they do not have the votes to override a veto, that is the way checks and balances work. Now, the judicial branch is unconstitutionally usurping power and exerting it over the other supposed co-equal branches. What you get when liberal judges mandate from the bench is not legislation, it is judicial carjacking. It opposes the will of the people.
Carjacking the Constitution by Judicial legislation circumvents the legislative branch, and the Executive Branch, the supposed three co-equal branches of government. The Judicial Bench, has not only hijacked the family, but for years has hijacked the Legislative and the Executive branch of government. These co-equal branches derive their power from the people. Now instead of deriving their power from the people, they impose their evil influence upon the people by forcing unjust laws upon them. Peter is correct, again the black robed masters have spoken and the people must bow down and worship at the altar of liberalism.
As I said, judicial mandates only give us things that society in her right mind would never condone, such as abortion, doctor assisted suicide, forced death by starvation as in the Terri Schiavo killing and other wicked examples.
The liberal, socialist and homosexual agenda must always be forced upon the people by the judicial branch. This is the reason we have been living in a culture of death in America. Such a culture has to be imposed for no such immoral legislation would ever come from the will of the ordinary American.
I do find it ironic that this is the exact same sort of rhetoric that was expressed against the courts when Brown vs. Board of Education was decided back in 1954.
I find the statement that “judicial mandates only give us things that society in her right mind would never condone, such as abortion, doctor assisted suicide, forced death by starvation as in the Terri Schiavo killing and other wicked examples,” very interesting…
Would those wicked things include the end of school segregation, the end of the ban on interracial marriages, the end of poll taxes, the overturning of peonage laws, the establishment of the presumption of innocence, the right to counsel when one cannot afford to pay, the right to distribute religious material on a town street even though it was a “company town,” or the right of the Federal government to prevent Federal funds being used to promote abortion. All of these were “judicial mandates.” I am sure I could find many more if I wanted to.
We have courts to prevent people’s rights from being overrun. We may not always agree with the decision, unless, of course, it is OUR rights that are being overrun.
No, I don’t agree with abortion, doctor assisted suicide, or forced death by starvation as in the Terri Schiavo killing. I find all of those rulings quite objectionable. But I would not go so far as to make a statement that all judicial mandates are evil. Some, including many that were thought evil at the time they were handed down, are now the cornerstones of our civil rights.
“If you think they should, go ahead and vote for candidates who support gay marriage.”
That’s a bit of the pot calling the kettle isn’t it? The anti-gay side isn’t content with the way it should work either. Why can’t you vote for the candidates that support your views? But no, you want to turn every thing into the majority stomping on the minority, somewhat like the bullies on the playground surrounding a weaker person and pummeling them (and no Dave, I’m not accusing anyone here of violence!). The people vote for the legislators, who make the laws and send to the governors who approve or veto, that is the American way. In Cali I would agree, the judges overstepped their authority and ultimately, though temporarily, it will hurt the gay communities. But the way that you advocate, mob rule, would have stifled any progress that has been made in this country since it’s beginning.
“culture of death”
I dare you to take an honest look at the impact of your words on LGBT people, in fact first take an honest look at our lives. Then think about your use of the above “defamatory statement” towards us. I feel quite safe to say you will never do that, so nothing will change.
David,
I am so glad to see that (at least) you acknowledge:
“In Cali I would agree, the judges overstepped their authority.”
But, on the subject of voting for candidates “that support your views”—that would be a good idea, in general, obviously. However, that remedy is hardly sufficient, when candidates such as Andrew McDonald and Michael Lawlor deliberately HIDE their “agenda” when they are running for state office.
Bob’s closing words in post #4:
“no such immoral legislation would ever come from the will of the ordinary American.”
I concur totally, and immediately thought of a (Book of Mormon) scripture in Mosiah 29:26 which reads:
“Now it is not common that the voice of the people desireth anything contrary to that which is right; but it is common for the lesser part of the people to desire that which is not right; therefore this shall ye observe and make it your law—to do your business by the voice of the people.”
Thank God that our Founding Fathers recognized the place of “the voice of the people.” I don’t think the FF ever intended that the ‘robed masters’ be worshiped as infallible, nor that the dictums of these few judges would be the ‘last word’ when there is a conflict with “the voice of the people.”
Dennis Prager had a brilliant column on townhall.com (5/20) on exactly why the SSM advocates are wrong (lying or willfully ignorant—these are MY words, not his) when they say that SSM won’t change anything for the rest of us:
“California Decision Will Radically Change Society”
Here are a few excerpts, but reading the whole article is well worth the time—:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DennisPrager/2008/05/20/california_decision_will_radically_change_society
“Unless California voters amend the California Constitution or Congress amends the U.S. Constitution, four justices of the California Supreme Court will have changed American society more than any four individuals since Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison.”
“The justices and their supporters know not what they did. They think that all they did was extend a “right” that had been unfairly denied to gays.
“Another reason for this decision is arrogance. First, the arrogance of four individuals to impose their understanding of what is right and wrong on the rest of society. And second is the arrogance of the four compassionate ones in assuming that all thinkers, theologians, philosophers, religions and moral systems in history were wrong, while they and their supporters have seen a moral light never seen before. Not a single religion or moral philosophical system — East or West — since antiquity ever defined marriage as between members of the same sex.
“That is one reason the argument that this decision is the same as courts undoing legal bans on marriages between races is false. No major religion — not Judaism, not Christianity, not Islam, not Buddhism — ever banned interracial marriage.” …”Justices who overthrew bans on interracial marriages, therefore, had virtually every moral and religious value system since ancient times on their side. But justices who overthrow the ban on same-sex marriage have ***nothing other their hubris and their notions of compassion on their side.”***
Dennis Prager excerpts cont’d:
“Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming — to do so would be declared “heterosexist,” morally equivalent to racist…. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.
“The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, **the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality.** Much of humanity — especially females — can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction — until now, accomplished through marriage.”
“Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law.”
##”Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.”##
*”We have entered something beyond Huxley’s “Brave New World.” All thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.”*
What exactly IS Andrew’s agenda? Be concise.
How does Andrew “deliberately hide his agenda?” when he runs for office?
Given that Andrew is elected time and again, obviously his constituents are pleased with his representation of their interests. Do you have a problem with that?
Regarding Senator McDonald’s “agenda”—it seems quite apparent, to most thinking citizens in Connecticut, that it was not just a *coincidence* that he and Michael Lawlor (2 gay men) ended up as co-chairs of the General Assembly’s Judiciary Committee. In those positions, they not only propose legislation and have great influence in Hartford, but they act as ‘gate-keepers’ for what legislation gets on the calendar and when, and voted favorably out of their committee, etc.
McDonald and Lawlor are thus in the best possible position to promote their desired legislation favoring the views of the LGBT constituency. I have spoken to people who lived and voted in Stamford when McDonald was campaigning—and they told me that Andrew McDonald hid his *orientation* from the voting public at that time.
wmrourke can believe what he likes, but I doubt that Mr. McDonald would have been elected the first time if he had been honest about the issues which are most important to him.
I DO “have a problem with” the angry, bitter, insulting attitude I have seen and heard from Senator McDonald in hearings at the capitol on SSM and civil union issues. He has stated more than once his view that those who disagree with the notion of SSM are hateful bigots.
You’re making a lot of claims about the man, Trish. Are any of them based on any sort of real, hard evidence? Or are they all assumptions colored by your dislike of gay people?
You fail to address what this alleged “agenda” of Andrew’s is, exactly. Do you honestly believe he built his entire career to achieve one end — gay marriage in CT?
Are you claiming that he graduated from Cornell, got a Doctor of Law (with honors) from UCONN, served on the Stamford Board of Reps, Stamford Board of Finance, chaired the Audit Committee, served as Director of Legal Affairs and Corporation Counsel for the City of Stamford (as well as becoming a litigation partner at one of the most prestigious law firms in CT) — simply so he could become Co-Chair of the Judiciary Committee to further his gay agenda in Connecticut?
You claim Andrew “hid his *orientation* from the voting public.” How so? What *exactly* did he do to hide his orientation in 2002? In 2004? In 2006?
Should he have worn a big name tag reading, “I’m gay?” Should all candidates for public office be required to state their sexual orientation? “Vote for me, I’m straight.” What’s next? Armbands? Tattoos?
Senator McDonald has been elected and re-elected to public office time and time again. Despite the “anti-gay” lawn signs that appeared in the dark of night around town in 2004 — which, by the bye, mobilized voters to rally to McDonald’s campaign, handily defeating his opponent, who had previously run for office on the George Wallace ticket. The voters in Stamford obviously cared more about electing the best candidate, the intelligent, accomplished man who had served the town and the state ably since the 1990s.
You claim Andrew was not “honest about the issues which are most important to him.” Having called the man a liar, please explain how you know *exactly* which issues are most important to Senator McDonald? Or do you assume?
Do you overlook his work for open space in Stamford? His work for affordable housing? His work for fiscal responsibility in government? Or do you dismiss those things because you are so sure Andrew has one goal and one goal only: the gay agenda?
I’ve never seen Andrew show an “angry, bitter, insulting attitude” anywhere, much less in hearings. Can you direct me to a specific instance of such behavior? Or an exact quote where he calls those who disagree with him on same sex marriage “hateful bigots?” Or are you once again letting your own politics and feelings color your opinion?
In short, you’ve called a dedicated public servant an opportunistic liar and cheat, using thinly-veiled language, because of his sexual orientation. If you can prove your accusations, please do.
Those “anti-gay” signs (which merely said that a vote for McDonald was a vote for same-sex unions…which, come to think of it, turned out to be true) did not “appear in the dark of night” in 2004, they “DISappeared” in the dark of night. We would still like to know who stole them.
Curiously, McDonald displayed one of those signs on the floor of the senate during the 2005 civil union debate. Given the mysterious fate of those signs, I’d love to know where he got his from.
Also during that debate McDonald said that pro-family voters do not oppose same-sex “marriage” because of “homophobia” but because of “hatred and bigotry.” Plenty of us were there in the senate gallery and heard him say it.
Come to think of it, one of the people there to hear McDonald claim that ours is the side motivated by hatred was the then-executive director of the Catholic Conference, who was being guarded by plainclothes police because a same-sex “marriage” supporter had made a death threat against her.
Loved the signs! I remember the first one I saw, at the foot of an I-95 off ramp. “A vote for Andrew McDonald is a vote for civil unions.” I thought, “Wow! Wish I lived in his district so I could vote for him!”
Then I realized that whoever made the signs was opposing civil unions.
When the signs appeared, popping up around town in the dead of night, it swelled the ranks of campaign volunteers for McDonald. In fact, the company for which I work gave people paid time off to work the polls for McDonald on election day if they so desired (not half bad for a company whose only gay employee was one apolitical lesbian).
Did you and Brian drive all the way down to Stamford and stick them into the ground yourselves, Peter?
Way to sink Cunningham — not that he ever had a chance anyhow. But your support did add an important nail to the coffin of his political aspiration.
As for that alleged threat made by a same sex marriage supporter, what ever came of that? Police ever get any leads?
The guy who made the death threat was arrested and prosecuted. The story made channel 3…and no where else.
And the the threatener go to jail? Is Ms. Hilliard safe now?
Tricia,
Thank you for posting the quotes in posts #9 and #10. I did not realize just how important this moment in history is for the protection of marriage and family, but the quotes you posted really make one realize the slipperly slope we are now on in American society.
Any informed person knows just how aggresive homosexual activism is in this country, and to pretent that it is not present is to stick one’s head in the sand (it’s also an effective filibuster strategy).
Thank you FIC for all that you do.
they (The Signs) “DISappeared” in the dark of night. We would still like to know who stole them.
Pete, you may not ever know who stole them. But, here is why they were stolen in the cover of darkness…
“but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”
That must be why those signs were PUT UP in the dark of night. Because they WERE put up at night.
I wasn’t involved in putting them up, so I’ll take your word for it. Stealing them is still a bigger deal, don’t you think?
I linked to the full article “Answering tough questions raised by Calif. ruling” in the washingtonblade (of May 30), most of which is on the marriagedebate blog (can link from this page) today.
Several ‘experts’ are quoted, on questions such as “could the legalization of same-sex marriage in California prevent priests and ministers from preaching that homosexuality is biblically forbidden? Could churches in time risk their tax-exempt status by refusing to marry gays?”
One ‘expert’ quoted in the article is “Chai Feldblum, a lesbian and professor of law at Georgetown University, [who] said lawsuits in this area are inevitable but that she’s confident the courts will exercise ‘common sense.’”
At the end of the full article, the writer quotes Chai Feldblum:
“Some people have deeply held moral beliefs and religions that teach that homosexuality is wrong. That’s just a reality,” she said. “I don’t call them bigots. I say they have moral positions that are different from my moral positions. I simply see it as a clash of moral beliefs, **but the government has to take a stand and come down on the other side of somebody’s moral beliefs. That doesn’t mean these people should be disrespected or denigrated, but that is one thing government is supposed to do.”**
It seems to me that she is stating that “government” *must* marginalize traditional religions and those who believe in the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and other traditional moral standards.
Peter, am I reading too much into her statement, or am I justified in being skeptical as to whether Ms. Feldblum means by “common sense” what you and I and the general, (socially, if not politically) conservative public mean when we say “common sense?”
I may be unclear in making my point—but it seems that what she is saying is like the *justification* arguments that people make for “activist” judges, rather than insisting that judges abide by what is ACTUALLY IN a “Constitution.”
Stolen, Peter?
The only ones I saw personally were on public property at the exit and entrance ramps at I-95. I’m not so sure it’s legal to put things like that on public property — perhaps they were removed by State or Municipal workers.
Did people put the signs on their own front lawns, like candidate lawn signs? Were signs stolen from private lawns?
Tricia, you’re right to read Feldblum’s comments for the threat to religious liberty that it is. This is what we’ve been warning against for years.