Making a Federal Case of It

As you've probably heard by now, lawyers Theodore Olson and David Boies are challenging the California Marriage Amendment in federal court. The usual advocacy groups are leery, though, figuring that they haven't manipulated the system enough yet to be confident of winning. Carol J. Williams has the Los Angeles Times story.

A coalition of nine gay-rights advocacy groups called the suit "premature" and warned that without more groundwork, the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't seem likely to rule that same-sex couples are entitled to marry.

Well why not? I thought it was supposed to be so glaringly obvious that only bigots and those completely ignorant of the law would fail to see that there is a right to neutered state marriage licenses.

[More is below the fold if you care to read it.]

The groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Lambda Legal and Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, urged those disappointed by Tuesday's high-court ruling upholding Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage to pursue their rights through another voter initiative or the Legislature.

It's... not... a... ban. They are not pursuing rights, but rather social engineering by a minority. But I'm glad to see they are advocating legislation instead of court imposition.

California's Supreme Court ruling upholding Proposition 8 creates a community of second-class citizens, Olson said of the thousands of gay and lesbian couples prohibited from marrying because of the voter initiative's redefinition of marriage as only between one man and one woman.

That doesn't prohibit anyone from marrying. Each one of us is either a man or a woman, after all.

I'm almost disappointed that there isn't some sort of challenging argument being made, or at least making it to the press. So much of the news articles over the last several days have looked like boilerplate. At least some of our critics around the blogosphere have colorful name-calling to go along with their failure to actually answer the arguments we make.