Cameras allowed for federal Prop 8 trial? YES Those opposed: supporters of the gay marriage ban Those in favor: supporters of gay marriage
Why is only one side opposed? To avoid making the trial a “circus” and to protect witnesses who testify against gay marriage from threat and harassment.
This seems ironic, since only a little over one generation ago it was gays and their supporters who experienced threat, harassment, and sometimes violence from public exposure. What has happened?
I think the greater reason Prop 8 supporters are against televising the trial (and, in fact, to having a trial at all) is because they realize their publicly broadcast position will look illogical and probably ridiculous when compared with the arguments presented by their opponents who support gay marriage.
What an opportune time today for Newsweek to publish conservative lawyer extraordinaire Ted Olsen’s explanation why he is on the pro gay marriage team. He makes a formidable, rock-solid argument for ending discrimination and allowing gay marriage.
I cannot wait for Monday. I expect I will lose a lot of sleep over the next few weeks watching daily youtube broadcasts of the trial late each evening.
Here are a few quotes from Ted Olsen’s statement:
__________________________________________________ “…I understand, but reject, certain religious teachings that denounce homosexuality as morally wrong, illegitimate, or unnatural; and I take strong exception to those who argue that same-sex relationships should be discouraged by society and law. Science has taught us, even if history has not, that gays and lesbians do not choose to be homosexual any more than the rest of us choose to be heterosexual. To a very large extent, these characteristics are immutable, like being left-handed. And, while our Constitution guarantees the freedom to exercise our individual religious convictions, it equally prohibits us from forcing our beliefs on others...” __________________________________________________ “As to whether the courts are "ready" for this case, just a few years ago, in Romer v. Evans, the United States Supreme Court struck down a popularly adopted Colorado constitutional amendment that withdrew the rights of gays and lesbians in that state to the protection of anti-discrimination laws. And seven years ago, in Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court struck down, as lacking any rational basis, Texas laws prohibiting private, intimate sexual practices between persons of the same sex, overruling a contrary decision just 20 years earlier.
These decisions have generated controversy, of course, but they are decisions of the nation's highest court on which our clients are entitled to rely. If all citizens have a constitutional right to marry, if state laws that withdraw legal protections of gays and lesbians as a class are unconstitutional, and if private, intimate sexual conduct between persons of the same sex is protected by the Constitution, there is very little left on which opponents of same-sex marriage can rely. As Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented in the Lawrence case, pointed out, "[W]hat [remaining] justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising '[t]he liberty protected by the Constitution'?" He is right, of course. One might agree or not with these decisions, but even Justice Scalia has acknowledged that they lead in only one direction.
California's Proposition 8 is particularly vulnerable to constitutional challenge, because that state has now enacted a crazy-quilt of marriage regulation that makes no sense to anyone. California recognizes marriage between men and women, including persons on death row, child abusers, and wife beaters. At the same time, California prohibits marriage by loving, caring, stable partners of the same sex, but tries to make up for it by giving them the alternative of "domestic partnerships" with virtually all of the rights of married persons except the official, state-approved status of marriage. Finally, California recognizes 18,000 same-sex marriages that took place in the months between the state Supreme Court's ruling that upheld gay-marriage rights and the decision of California's citizens to withdraw those rights by enacting Proposition 8.
So there are now three classes of Californians: heterosexual couples who can get married, divorced, and remarried, if they wish; same-sex couples who cannot get married but can live together in domestic partnerships; and same-sex couples who are now married but who, if they divorce, cannot remarry. This is an irrational system, it is discriminatory, and it cannot stand.” __________________________________________________
Posted by Anthonie (Member # 884) on :
I didn't realize that if an appellate court rejects an appeal (i.e. the 9th Circuit Court) it could still be appealed above them to a higher court (the US Supreme Court).