The lawsuit against the anti-gay-marriage initiative, launched by Los Angeles political consultant Chad H. Griffin and backed by entertainment industry activists, drew scorn and anger from gay rights lawyers when it was filed in May.Why not call it the California Marriage Amendment?
The clash comes at a pivotal moment for the case, seen as the most likely vehicle for winning marriage rights for gays across the nation, and raises questions about who will control the legal agenda.Winning marriage rights for gays? Gay people and straight people have the same marriage rights, and always have. As for who controls the legal agenda, I find the notion of anyone controlling the agenda curious when we're supposedly talking about fundamental rights. It isn't so curious if you look at this an inventing a new "right", rather than changing laws so as to not infringe upon actual rights.
[More after the jump.]
Griffin, 36, the force behind the federal challenge, was not at the forefront of the marriage movement until now. He is a successful political strategist who began his career in the Clinton White House and made his entertainment contacts there.The connection that keeps giving.
His firm was not brought into the anti-Proposition 8 campaign until its very end. Griffin quickly raised money, tapping such Hollywood luminaries as Brad Pitt, and his TV spots are believed to have helped change poll numbers. But it was not enough.It does take time to successfully challenge truth. Brad should be careful. Some of the same arguments that would force states to license a bridless or groomless pairing as marriage could also be used to force them to give his wife and her brother a marriage license together.Proposition 8 passed last November with 51% of the vote, and many in the gay community faulted the marriage-rights campaign for failing to quickly challenge their foes' claims.
Hoping to put together the strongest possible case, Griffin hired conservative legal giant Theodore Olson and acclaimed liberal lawyer David Boies to represent two same-sex couples who want to marry.They want to neuter state marriage licensing via federal court intrusion. If they want to "marry" they already can. They can also go to a state that will give them a marriage license. If the state didn't recognize my marriage, I would still consider myself married. Do these couples only considered themselves married if a court tells a state to given them a license?
Constitutional scholars, from liberal to conservative, predict a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage that could go either way.It's rather sad, for many reasons, that anyone thinks you could get four or possibly five SCOTUS justices to impose neutered marriage licensing on the states.Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who is the author of two major rulings backing gay rights, is considered the swing vote. He usually sides with the conservative wing.
"If marriage is redefined, its connection to organic bodily union—and thus to procreation—will be undermined. It will increasingly be understood as an emotional union for the sake of adult satisfaction that is served by mutually agreeable sexual play. But there is no reason that primarily emotional unions like friendships should be permanent, exclusive, limited to two, or legally regulated at all. Thus, there will remain no principled basis for upholding marital norms like monogamy." Robert P. George
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