The Plaintiffs Rest in the Proposition 8 Trial

The plaintiffs, who want to overturn the duly adopted and popular California Marriage Amendment have finished presenting their case. Now, the defense has their chance. The lawyers for the plaintiffs will be able to cross-examine witnesses for the defense, and closing statements will come later.

Associated Press writer Lisa Leff tells us how the plaintiffs wrapped up their woefully weak case. Remember – they have the burden of proving their case.

They played a video from some supporters of Proposition 8 that correctly points out that the reasoning used as the basis for neutering marriage could also be applied to getting enshrined in law plural marriage, sibling marriage, and interspecies marriage.

The lawyers appeared to be introducing the material to demonstrate the campaign for the ban appealed to religious-based, anti-gay bias to scare voters into voting for the measure.

Actually, it sounds like the video was appealing to "biases" against plural marriage, sibling marriage, and interspecies marriage - biases that most marriage neutering advocates also express.

[The majority of this blog entry is after the jump.]

Proposition 8 sponsors objected to the video, saying the content of the simulcast was not controlled by campaign managers or leaders.

However, Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker allowed the material to be put into the record because the coalition of religious and conservative groups behind Proposition 8 paid for Garlow's work.

Marriage neutering advocates made plenty of outrageous claims and hateful statements towards religious minorities, captured on video. Maybe those should be entered into evidence as well?

One unidentified speaker compared the potential social impact of "this social reengineering of marriage" to the way the 9/11 terrorist attacks made the world "a fundamentally different place."

Some people don't get the connection between marriage and society. They think marriage is simply taking a sexual relationship to the next social level, and kicking it off with a series of exercises in narcissism. Why would the state care about that? This is why some people can't see that neutering marriage will be the basis for fundamentally reordering society. Other marriage neutering advocates do realize this, which is precisely why they are trying so hard to impose their will on the law in this area. If they get this sledgehammer, they will start swinging.

"If same-sex marriage is legalized, then it must be taught as normal, acceptable and moral behavior in every single public school," said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.

This is true. What is wrong with telling the truth? If there official state policy is that brideless pairings are marriage and that groomless pairings are marriage, then of course that will play out in state schools.

In one, produced by the American Family Council in Mississippi, the chairman of the California campaign, Ron Prentice, spoke against same-sex couples raising children.

"Children need and deserve the chance to have both mother love and father love," Prentice said.

Men and women "don't bring to a marriage and a family the same natural set of skills and talents." he said.

People deny this obvious truth for the sake of their selfish personal agendas. If you dispute this, you're like a polluter who disputes that the sky is normally blue. I won't be able to prove to you that the sky is normally blue.

Bottom line: What does the amendment say? Does it violate the federal Constitution? No, it doesn't. The plaintiffs, from the sympathetic reports I have read, have failed to make their case. We can't run society by courts coddling the feelings of individuals who claim hurt feelings because they asked for something and were turned down, or because some of the people who turned them down had reasons the rest of us don't like. Courts must stick to evidence and laws.