The Federal Prop. 8 Trial / Gay Marriage Catch-All

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Westboro church files a brief in the DOMA case. Among their arguments, "Of all the harms that a society can face, none are worse than incurring the wrath of God by a blatant policy of defiance of and disobedience to His plain standard."

Kevin Underhill has this to say:

Normally, when briefing the issue of whether a statute violates the Constitution it is customary to refer to that Constitution, but as Mazzone points out, Westboro may now have "the surely unprecedented distinction of authoring a brief to the Supreme Court on a constitutional question that makes not a single mention of the Constitution itself."

It is probably also the first such brief to cite as authority a letter some guy in Australia wrote to the editor of the Topeka Capital-Journal, but I haven't done the research to know for sure.

To be entirely accurate, there are two references to the First Amendment in the brief, although both references appear in quotations, not the argument itself. The argument, to the extent there is one, seems to be that the Establishment Clause doesn't mean government has to be hostile to religion. That's certainly true, but that doesn't mean it has to be friendly to hostile religious people. And that's as close as the brief gets to citing the Constitution.

These guys are, well, that's certainly true to form. But that doesn't even rate compared to some of the stuff that's in our appellate record. See this list. My person favorite is the plaintiff who filed a hard-boiled egg as part of a request for a preliminary injunction.

Ah, gay news. When it rains, it pours.

The National Organization for Marriage is stomping their feet in record time. This time, they have a big money war chest and they are going to use it!

Washington, D.C. — The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today pledged to spend $500,000 against any Republican legislator who votes in favor of redefining marriage in Minnesota, and will support any Democrat who votes to preserve marriage. NOM's Minnesota state political fund was the largest contributor to the proposed Minnesota Marriage Amendment (giving over $2.2 million) and has helped defeat virtually every Republican who has supported gay marriage, including three Republican state Senators in New York in 2012.

Because, of course, their war chest did fantastic work in the last election. As a recap:

Washington State: voters approved gay marriage.
Maine: voters approved gay marriage.
Maryland: voters approved gay marriage.
Minnesota: voters rejected a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

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Scotland's top Catholic cleric, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, has resigned over allegations that he made unwanted sexual advances toward younger clergy. O'Brien has also been one of the leading voices against marriage equality in the United Kingdom.

So, let's understand the Cardinal's keen sense of morality and ethics:

Allowing two people of the same gender who love each other and want to solidify their relationship through the bonds of matrimony - BAD!
Making unwanted sexual advances to your subordinates - OKEY DOKEY!

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Homophobic Matt Barber from the Liberty Counsel pens a letter to gay teens, apparently to make them feel better. I will let you be the judge on whether or not he succeeded:

God’s word also says that when we sin sexually, it’s particularly egregious because our bodies are the temple of Christ. This separation from God – a natural result of sexual sin – can lead to depression and even despair.

If you feel such despair, know this: it is not “homophobia” causing it, as adult enablers might tell you, but, rather, it is the sin itself that causes it (or struggling alone, absent Christ, with the temptation to sin).

You are being used. Adult homosexual activists with a political agenda are using you as a pawn to achieve selfish goals in a dangerous political game.

You’re just a means to an end.

They may have convinced themselves otherwise, but they don’t care about you. They don’t love you. They can’t. Their version of “love” is built on lies. It’s devoid of truth.

Love without truth is hate.

If you continue down this wide, empty path, make no mistake: it will not “get better.”

It gets much, much worse.

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And finally, something to make you smile...

God’s word also says that when we sin sexually, it’s particularly egregious because our bodies are the temple of Christ. This separation from God – a natural result of sexual sin – can lead to depression and even despair.

If you feel such despair, know this: it is not “homophobia” causing it, as adult enablers might tell you, but, rather, it is the sin itself that causes it (or struggling alone, absent Christ, with the temptation to sin).

You are being used. Adult homosexual activists with a political agenda are using you as a pawn to achieve selfish goals in a dangerous political game.

You’re just a means to an end.

They may have convinced themselves otherwise, but they don’t care about you. They don’t love you. They can’t. Their version of “love” is built on lies. It’s devoid of truth.

Love without truth is hate.

If you continue down this wide, empty path, make no mistake: it will not “get better.”

It gets much, much worse.

This is so infuriating. I just... I don't want to offend you personally, PR, but if anything, it's been my separation from religion and god, specifically Christian/Catholic in my case that has made all of this completely irrelevant.

"Love without truth is hate." Yep. This guy hates gay people, it's right there in the lies he tells in this letter.

I am not offended, Mike.

Ironically, it is Barber's vile rhetoric and cheap theatrics that drives people away instead of embracing the Christian faith.

His brand of "shotgun theology" is great for getting people to believe out of fear.

I am rather convinced that God and Christ would rather have people believe out of love.

I missed this bombshell from earlier:

WASHINGTON — Dozens of prominent Republicans — including top advisers to former President George W. Bush, four former governors and two members of Congress — have signed a legal brief arguing that gay people have a constitutional right to marry, a position that amounts to a direct challenge to Speaker John A. Boehner and reflects the civil war in the party since the November election.

Wonderful news.

Just a quick thank you for this thread and you all. Nice to drop by and get updated on what progress is getting made.
You can imagine I'm rather an anomaly here in Greece, telling high school students...

I imagine the Greeks have a complicated relationship with the issue of homosexuality. I am given to understand that it is very much a macho culture with a good deal of its own homophobia, but how do they reconcile that with so much of their history being written about heroic homosexuals?

Phoenix Rev wrote:

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And finally, something to make you smile...

My mom always said we would know that homosexuality was becoming more accepted when we, as a society, began making awkward panders in their direction during commercials. We have arrived.

NSMike wrote:

"Love without truth is hate." Yep. This guy hates gay people, it's right there in the lies he tells in this letter.

And it's so obvious that he's wrong. Love without Truth is either Compassion or Sacrifice, depending on whether Courage is involved or not. You'd think he never played the Ultima series at all.

Phoenix Rev wrote:
Washington, D.C. — The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today pledged to spend $500,000 against any Republican legislator who votes in favor of redefining marriage in Minnesota, and will support any Democrat who votes to preserve marriage.

And finally, something to make you smile...

What makes me smile is the tiniest shred of hope that they'll hold to that promise and end up going broke because of it. There are 89 Republicans in the Minnesota state house, and NOM's yearly income from donations is only around 7-8 million or so. It wouldn't take too much to run them out of money.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/us...

A group of Republicans have written a letter in support of marriage equality.

Ulairi wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/26/us...

A group of Republicans have written a letter in support of marriage equality.

And only two of them are present office holders.

What a disgrace Jennifer Robach Morse is.

Morse is the president of the Ruth Institute, a phony and vapid research arm of the National Organization for Marriage. She is particularly despicable in her views on gay people, and often spouts gibberish as though she is some expert on homosexuality (she isn't).

A recording of her address earlier this month at the Catholic Women’s Conference in Venice, Florida surfaced today, and suffice to say, Morse one of the most ignorant human beings I have heard vis-a-vis homosexuality.

From her remarks:

I’ve noticed in my encounters with men who are same-sex attracted particularly that they have a sense of shame. Have any of you ever noticed this? … I’ve noticed that a lot of the people who are very active in the movement to redefine marriage will describe that when they were teenagers that they had a sense of wrongness — of being wrong — and of God thinking they were an abomination, like they all knew that verse. [...]

So they have this sense of wrongness and I think that many of them believe that redefining marriage is going to make them feel better. I think they think that if all of us will approve of them that they will feel better… Making yourself feel good about doing something that is deeply wrong for you is not in the end going to work.

Gee, it couldn't possibly be that gay men feel ashamed of being gay because society made the feel ashamed by equating them with pedophiles, rapists, and murderers. It couldn't be that vicious people like Jerry Falwell demonized gays. It couldn't possibly be that gays were made to feel as though actually loving another person of the same sex was some sort of perversion.

It was 1980 when a Catholic priest at my parochial high school told me that God would rather have me be dead than gay. Is there any wonder why I would feel ashamed of being gay after having had that nice bit of pastoral care lobbed at me. (The only thing more tragic than the priest's comments to me was his departure from the Catholic priesthood some 12 years later to be with his male lover.)

But that was then and this is now. I am not ashamed of being gay. I am very proud of being who I am and that includes being exceptionally proud of having a wonderful husband and a legal marriage license that says that I stood before God and my family and friends and declared my love, commitment and life to a wonderful man.

And while I have been ashamed of things I have done or said in my life, nothing makes me more ashamed than people like Jennifer Robach Morse and their pseudo-understanding of homosexuality and gay people.

Not only that, but mid-puberty humans of all genders and orientations feel shame as a prominent emotion.

Were surprise-boners, acne, and a cracking voice God's way of telling me that I'm a piece of sh*t abomination that should be put to death? Or was it only the homosexual teenagers with surprise-boners, acne, and a cracking voice who's shame was a direct message from God?

Paleocon wrote:

I imagine the Greeks have a complicated relationship with the issue of homosexuality. I am given to understand that it is very much a macho culture with a good deal of its own homophobia, but how do they reconcile that with so much of their history being written about heroic homosexuals?

Or how do they feel about the museums filled with homoerotic vases?

From what I can tell, pride in all things that came from ancient Greece are simply in a separate place, identity wise.

Part of the macho and patriarchal culture is that a gay son in particular is seen as a failure of dad's masculinity.
So that really, really helps teens trying to figure themselves out.

I've only had one student come out to me in the five years I've been at the private high school where I teach now. I try to be supportive and open of those students pinging my gaydar, but it's just not something most students could really deal with while still living here. I teach in a program (IB) for students who plan to go to university abroad...so I have hope for them when they hit the UK or the US. I'm usually not great at spotting female students questioning, but this year I have one student who I wish I could tell her...it's okay. Very, very difficult.

Since caring, empathy and tolerance are part of the mission statement of the international program, I can get away with being very openly against intolerance, and I make it clear to my students that having been an alum of the U-M Men's Glee Club (University of Michigan), I have many, many, many gay friends and it's really not okay to speak with any kind of homophobia in front of me. It varies by year whether this can lead to an open discussion of the issue or not. Oddly, I can much more easily get away with having any kind of discussion here than I could in the US. I know a friend of mine back in Michigan had a colleague who got in trouble for allowing a middle-school student to play an openly pro-gay rights/tolerance song in class.

Roo wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I imagine the Greeks have a complicated relationship with the issue of homosexuality. I am given to understand that it is very much a macho culture with a good deal of its own homophobia, but how do they reconcile that with so much of their history being written about heroic homosexuals?

Or how do they feel about the museums filled with homoerotic vases?

From what I can tell, pride in all things that came from ancient Greece are simply in a separate place, identity wise.

Part of the macho and patriarchal culture is that a gay son in particular is seen as a failure of dad's masculinity.
So that really, really helps teens trying to figure themselves out.

I've only had one student come out to me in the five years I've been at the private high school where I teach now. I try to be supportive and open of those students pinging my gaydar, but it's just not something most students could really deal with while still living here. I teach in a program (IB) for students who plan to go to university abroad...so I have hope for them when they hit the UK or the US. I'm usually not great at spotting female students questioning, but this year I have one student who I wish I could tell her...it's okay. Very, very difficult.

Since caring, empathy and tolerance are part of the mission statement of the international program, I can get away with being very openly against intolerance, and I make it clear to my students that having been an alum of the U-M Men's Glee Club (University of Michigan), I have many, many, many gay friends and it's really not okay to speak with any kind of homophobia in front of me. It varies by year whether this can lead to an open discussion of the issue or not. Oddly, I can much more easily get away with having any kind of discussion here than I could in the US. I know a friend of mine back in Michigan had a colleague who got in trouble for allowing a middle-school student to play an openly pro-gay rights/tolerance song in class.

I can imagine that being a tough thing.

Granted, I grew up in a very different time, but even in highly progressive Howard County, the issue of homosexuality was very taboo and deeply ostracized in high school. And as a hetero, myself, I didn't really think to question the orthodoxy of seeing same sex relationships as deviant largely because it was just one more thing that could earn you a social or physical beatdown in the long list of infractions from the high school hothouse norm (being Asian and liking science fiction was right up there as well).

It wasn't until I got to college and a student club I was part of (an historical reinacting society) shared office space with the GLSU that it occurred to me that folks who were different had the right to be treated with dignity. This is also, incidentally, where I got in touch with my Asian identity and learned to tell racists to go fornicate with themselves whenever they'd say stuff I routinely accepted in high school.

I guess what I am trying to say is that the entire institution of high school is a deeply socially conservative one that does so much to define "normality" in a coercive and hierarchical way. Some folks grow out of it. Some never do. And your work getting people through it and to the next place where things really do get better is, as Phoenix Rev might put it, "god's work".

Thanks for that.

Obama administration plans to tell the supreme court that it favors overturning prop 8.

WASHINGTON -- California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriages in the state, should be overturned, the Obama administration plans to tell the Supreme Court.

An administration official confirmed that the Justice Department will file a brief in the case today. Officials would not discuss the legal arguments the brief would contain.

The decision to enter the case comes despite the president’s past position that marriage rights should be a state matter. In recent weeks, however, Obama increasingly has referred to same-sex marriage as an issue of civil rights.

Reason #89,823,372 why allowing same-sex marriage is important:

Someone I know tangentially (via G+) is about to lose his partner to heart-related issues. They don't have any paperwork in place. I don't know 100% for certain, but I'm betting that the surviving partner's about to be screwed out of everything he and his partner built together because there's nothing in place for him.

Ugh.

I musta gotten some windex in my eyes while cleaning the bathroom tonight.

Yeah. That's it

Windex.

That was awesome.

This is just tragic. Completely and utterly tragic.

Lech Walesa, the famous leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland and that nation's first post-Soviet, democratically elected president has now affirmed himself as an infamous homophobe.

In an interview, Walesa was asked about civil partnerships for gays and lesbians and went off on a tear about how gays and lesbians who would serve in Poland's Parliament should not be allowed to sit on the front benches, and, better yet, should be forced to sit behind a wall.

Walesa said in a television interview on Friday that he believes gays have no right to sit on the front benches in Parliament and, if represented at all, should sit in the back, "and even behind a wall."

"They have to know that they are a minority and must adjust to smaller things. And not rise to the greatest heights, the greatest hours, the greatest provocations, spoiling things for the others and taking (what they want) from the majority," he told the private broadcaster TVN during a discussion of gay rights. "I don't agree to this and I will never agree to it."

"A minority should not impose itself on the majority," Walesa said.

In other words, democracy, freedom and equal rights... for some.

What a horrible blemish on his legacy.

As noted in a prior post, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the highest ranking Catholic authority in the U.K., resigned on Feb. 22 after it was disclosed that he had been making sexual advances to his male subordinates.

O'Brien released his statement of contrition today:

In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal. To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness.

O'Brien was leading the cause against gay marriage in the U.K. and made deplorable statements like this:

(Gay marriage) represents a grotesque subversion of a universally accepted human right.

All the while, he was putting the moves on male subordinates and then, when caught, was going to contest the allegations that were actually true.

I wonder how long it will be until someone suggests he become a candidate for beautification or sainthood.

I just cannot understand how you can be so self-loathing. How do these people function mentally?

ZaneRockfist wrote:

I just cannot understand how you can be so self-loathing. How do these people function mentally?

Lots and lots of illicit sex and power games.

Phoenix Rev wrote:
In recent days certain allegations which have been made against me have become public. Initially, their anonymous and non-specific nature led me to contest them.

However, I wish to take this opportunity to admit that there have been times that my sexual conduct has fallen below the standards expected of me as a priest, archbishop and cardinal. To those I have offended, I apologise and ask forgiveness.

O'Brien was leading the cause against gay marriage in the U.K. and made deplorable statements like this:
.

I can hear Jon Stewart paraphrasing this in my head,

"In recent days I thought I could get away with blatantly lying through my teeth, and then those pesky witnesses with their actual real names came up..."

Tanglebones wrote:
ZaneRockfist wrote:

I just cannot understand how you can be so self-loathing. How do these people function mentally?

Lots and lots of illicit sex and power games.

Sex is way hotter if it's sex you're not supposed to be having?

I have said before and will say again that the arguments against gay marriage come down to two things:

1. My God says it's wrong.
2. Gay sex, particularly between two men, is icky.

And now we have Peter LaBarbera, the president of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, giving us his thoughts about gay sex:

LaBarbera: If you want to just think of how wrong homosexual so-called marriage is just ask yourself: how do two guys consummate their marriage? Yuck.

The sad tragedy here is LaBarbera's simplistic and one-dimensional view of what consummating a marriage is. What a pity for his wife.

His view also shows that this is exactly what concerns a lot of the myopic views on gay marriage. We as a society should never allow gay marriage because of the sex practices that gays are involved with - especially anal sex. It also shows that LaBarbera is an ignorant clown. Contrary to what LaBarbera and his ilk think, not all gay men engage in anal sex and there are plenty of heterosexual couples that enjoy anal sex.

But gay sex is icky (or yucky in this case) so let's use that as a basis for discrimination!!! LaBarbera must live in a fantasy land if he thinks his view deserves anything other than a huge dose of mocking.

And I more than happy to help him out on that front.

You know... you have to wonder why Peter LaBarbera is so focused on anal sex.

Actually, we're all adults. We probably don't need to wonder so much. We can figure it out.

The opponents of gay marriage are more focused on the sex than the couples that want to get married.

Sex is easy. You can do that without a legal contract.

The opponents of gay marriage are more focused on the sex than the couples that want to get married.

Also more than the people already married... or does that go without saying? Heyooooooooooooo!