Prop. 8 backers appeal to full 9th Circuit
SACRAMENTO ? A legal team defending Proposition 8, through which voters in California defined marriage in the state constitution as being between one man and one woman, urged a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit today to review a smaller panel?s 2-1 decision striking down the voter-approved measure.
As WND reported, on Feb. 7, two judges on a three-judge 9th Circuit panel ruled in Perry v. Brown that California?s marriage amendment ? Article I, Section 7.5 of the state constitution ? is unconstitutional, arguing that the seven million voters who approved the Proposition 8 amendment in November 2008 (52 percent) sought to ?target a minority group.?
Jimmy Carter-appointee Stephen Reinhardt and Bill Clinton-appointee Michael Hawkins joined in the majority opinion. Randy Smith, appointed by George W. Bush, dissented.
The 2-1 decision found: ?Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason [for Proposition 8].?
Lead counsel Charles J. Cooper, with the Cooper & Kirk law firm, said, ?The idea that Californians ? of all people ? sought to ?send a message that gays and lesbians are of lesser worth,? as the two-judge decision claims, is simply absurd. Voters from all walks of life, political parties, races, and creeds supported Proposition 8.?
The 2-1 ruling upheld the district court decision by Judge Vaughn Walker, a homosexual who was in a position to benefit from his own decision. The case now could be heard by the full panel of the 9th Circuit and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cooper said a 2006 decision by New York?s highest court illustrates his point: ?Until a few decades ago, it was an accepted truth for almost everyone who ever lived, in any society in which marriage existed, that there could be marriages only between participants of different sex. A court should not lightly conclude that everyone who held this belief was irrational, ignorant or bigoted. We do not so conclude.?
Senior Counsel Brian Raum of the Alliance Defense Fund, which argued for the traditional definition of marriage, said the ruling from the 9th Circuit was based on an unfair interpretation of the state Constitution.
?The people of California deserve to have their marriage amendment defended before the full appeals court,? Raum said. ?The panel?s ruling mischaracterized the purpose of marriage, failed to faithfully and fairly interpret the Constitution, and disregarded every relevant appellate and Supreme Court precedent in American history. Marriage is too valuable to be redefined by two San Francisco judges in a case funded by Hollywood millionaires.?
Walker?s 136-page ruling said, ?Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples.?
In his ruling, Walker also arrived at the following highly controversial legal findings:
- ?Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.?
- ?Rather, the exclusion exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and in marriage. That time has passed.?
- ?The gender of a child?s parent is not a factor in a child?s adjustment.?
- ?The evidence shows beyond any doubt that parents? genders are irrelevant to children?s developmental outcomes.?
- ?Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.?
- ?Many of the purported interests identified by proponents are nothing more than a fear or unarticulated dislike of same-sex couples.?
His decision essentially ignored a warning from California Supreme Court Justice Marvin Baxter, who dissented when his court created same-sex ?marriage? in the state.
Baxter wrote, ?The bans on incestuous and polygamous marriages are ancient and deeprooted, and, as the majority suggests, they are supported by strong considerations of social policy. Our society abhors such relationships, and the notion that our laws could not forever prohibit them seems preposterous. Yet here, the majority overturns, in abrupt fashion, an initiative statute confirming the equally deeprooted assumption that marriage is a union of partners of the opposite sex. The majority does so by relying on its own assessment of contemporary community values, and by inserting in our Constitution an expanded definition of the right to marry that contravenes express statutory law.
?Who can say that, in 10, 15 or 20 years, an activist court might not rely on the majority?s analysis to conclude, on the basis of a perceived evolution in community values, that the laws prohibiting polygamous and incestuous marriages were no longer constitutionally justified?? Baxter wrote.
Source: http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/prop-8-backers-appeal-to-full-9th-circuit/
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