Foes of Marriage rest their case; End of two weeks of anti-8 testimony in California.

Austin Nimocks is Senior Legal Counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. He is among the team of lawyers defending the California Marriage Amendment in the federal courtroom of Judge Walker in San Francisco.

In a blogpost at the ADF website, Nimocks summarized the first two weeks of the trial.

At the end of the day, the plaintiffs rested their case. By resting, they announced that they no longer had any evidence to offer in support of their case to redefine marriage for the entire country. After two weeks, here’s what the plaintiffs established:

(1) That they’re capable of calling witnesses who have absolutely nothing to do with the case.

(2) That the so-called expert on “sexual orientation” is unable to establish that there is a well-understood, universal definition of this concept (unlike race or sex).

(3) That they’re capable of disrespecting religious faiths of all kinds.

(4) That their objective economist would still support the repeal of Proposition 8 even if the evidence proved same-sex “marriage” to be an economic calamity.

(5) That their expert on marriage admitted that a major historic purpose of marriage was to meet the child’s need to be emotionally, morally, practically, and legally affiliated with the woman and the man whose sexual union brought the child into the world.

(6) That their historian admitted that people voted for Proposition 8 for a range of reasons that had nothing to do with an invidious intent to “discriminate.”

(7) That their developmental psychologist admitted that there are differences between men and women that affect child development, that there is evidence that the absence of a father has its greatest and most predictable effect earlier in a child’s life, and that it is important for infants to attach to both their father and mother.

(8) That their expert on political science thinks that the movement to redefine marriage has “no reliable political allies,” even though the California governor and attorney general are refusing to defend this case.

In the end, after two weeks of trial, the plaintiffs have questioned witnesses for about 28 courtroom hours while the ProtectMarriage.com legal team has questioned witnesses for about 27 courtroom hours, and the ProtectMarriage.com legal team has not yet called a single witness.

Stay tuned next week. Experts defending marriage and the California marriage amendment will testify.

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The ADF provides a day-by-day review of the trial's proceedings. Read the whole thing, here.