Brody's Notes... The New York Times: A Basic Civil Right

U. S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, Presiding Judge In California's Prop 8 Trial
Photo By The San Francisco Chronicle

By Brody Levesque (Bethesda, Maryland) June 12 | As closing arguments scheduled for next Wednesday approach in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger in U. S. District Court in San Francisco, the case, which challenges California's Prop 8 ban on same sex marriage, and which has been on a lengthy hiatus as attorney's fought over documents and disclosures, generated a call in an editorial by The New York Times to end discrimination against Gay marriage.

The Times is quoted as saying:

"The testimony made abundantly clear that excluding same-sex couples from marriage exacts a grievous toll on gay people and their families. Domestic partnerships are a woefully inadequate substitute."

The Editorial went on to note that Defenders of Proposition 8 produced no evidence to back up their claim that marriage between same-sex couples would hurt heterosexual marriage. 

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” the defense attorney, Charles Cooper, said when asked for an explanation by the judge at a pretrial hearing.

Continuing the Editorial stated:

The defense called only two witnesses. The first, Kenneth Miller, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, argued that gay people are a powerful political force, which was meant to support the claim that there is no need for enhanced judicial protection. He ended up admitting that gay men and lesbians suffer discrimination.

The other witness, David Blankenhorn, the president of the Institute for American Values, argued that marriage is being weakened by rising divorce rates and more unmarried people having children, but he could not convincingly explain what the genders of married couples had to do with that.

Upon questioning, he acknowledged that marriage is a “public good” that would benefit same-sex couples and their children, and that to allow same-sex marriage “would be a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion.” The net result was to reinforce the sense that Proposition 8 was driven by animus rather than any evidence of concrete harm to heterosexual marriages or society at large.

[ Read the entire Editorial here.]

One observer noted: 

"June 2010 will become memorable in Gay History, because the decision by San Francisco Judge Walker in the Proposition 8 Trial may establish a legal landmark about Gay Equality. Many legal experts have stated that Judge Walker's ruling may be the green light for the issue to travel to the U.S. Supreme Court. The job of that Supreme Court is to decide whether a State Court can establish a law that discriminates against gays in every area of equal-rights-for-all when the National Law forbids discrimination against one's civil rights. / What has to be remembered is that marriage is both a sacrament of the Church, as well as legal right known as a civil union of the State. Can the intention of a sacrament for a man and a woman be demanded upon the State's ritual of marriage? The only answer is NO, because America has a separation between Church and State. America is not a theocracy, it is a democracy. Governmental laws do not have to be imbued with religious restrictions."