Family Research Council (FRC) and the Thomas More Society (TMS) of Chicago, Illinois, today announced the filing of amicus briefs opposing the lower court decisions in the two marriage cases the U.S. Supreme Court will hear in late March, 2013. Hollingsworth v. Perry comes to the Court out of the Proposition 8 litigation in California. United States v. Windsor involves a challenge to the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and arose out of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
... Of the cases FRC President Tony Perkins said:
"The health of our nation's families determines the strength of our nation. Redefining marriage only undermines the societal purpose of marriage which has always been to build healthy families and provide children with both a mom and a dad.
"The Supreme Court must strike down the lower court decisions against the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8. DOMA was completely appropriate in 1996, when it passed bipartisanly through Congress and was signed by Democratic President Bill Clinton. The uniformity in federal law it creates by explicitly confirming that 'marriage' would be between one man and one woman for federal purposes ensures equal treatment under law for all Americans. Americans have overwhelmingly decided to uphold this definition of marriage, as a significant majority of states in the U.S. consider marriage to be between one man and one woman.
"Additionally, we believe the people's vote on Proposition 8 should be respected. It is the constitutional right of the people to create their own state laws where the federal Constitution has not already ruled. Activist courts like the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should not overturn the vote of the people. We hope the Supreme Court will recognize the right of voters to uphold natural marriage as the law of their state," concluded Perkins.
11 Comments
You mean the FRC that's a designated hate group run by Tony Perkins who has advocated for exporting gay citizens? That FRC? Gotcha. You're in good company, NOM!
Thanks for keeping us informed, NOM. Very glad to see this.
It's a brilliantly written brief (snickering now)
Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) both conflic with the Constitution of the United States. Both provide differing legal standards for legally married Gay and Straight couples. That violates the 14th Amendment. The only way marriage can be a "States Right" issue is for the federal government to get out of the marriage business altogether, including eliminating 1,138 legal benefits, protections, and responsibilities, including survivor benefits under Social Security.
There are no legally married same-gendered companions recognized under Federal law and "gay" is a descriptive; not a unique independent life-form.
I'm older then the bastardized form of the word "Gay" that is currently being used by decadents to paint an appearance of acceptability/respectability for the sexually depraved.
These miscreants are seeking to impose their guilt onto society; to create willing victims who affirm the appropriateness of the crimes perpetrated against them.
Depraved: marked by corruption or evil; especially : perverted
Corrupt: to change from good to bad in morals, manners, or actions. (2) to alter from the original or correct form or version
Pervert: a unusual or abnormal sexual act that is habitual.
Randy, whether you think marriage equality for Gay couples is "corrupt" or "perverted" or "depraved" will be irrelevant when the Supreme Court rules on the Constitutionality of Prop. 8 and DOMA.
Jeannette,
What I think is inconsequential to who these people are. I did not make these miscreants perverted, depraved, or corrupt; they did that all by themselves.
SCOTUS will never make the mistake of equating what people do with who people are as a matter of law; to do so would be a violation of their oaths of office and a blatant act of treason.
If you truly believed this depravity were acceptable on its own merits you would not be here insisting it be declared to be that which, by its very nature, it is incapable of ever becoming - by the laws of nature and natures God.
The Emperor has no clothes.
Jeanette, your reasoning is based on the fallacy that state law trumps federal law. If that were the case, then federal law would have to automatically recognize polygamy if even so much as one state legalizes it for the benefit of, say, fundamentalist mormons. You also falsely assume that the "privileges or immunities" mentioned in the 14th amendment are anything any special interest group arbitrarily declares. It isn't. Federal law does not recognize the redefinition of marriage as either a "privilege" or an "immunity."
Well, of the SSMers who commented here, how many of you have actually read the brief?
Instead of attacking the FRC, try to engage with the content of the arguments made in that brief.
I mean, just because this or that SSM advocate is gay does not mean that his or her argument must be dismissed. The content of that argument is the focus, surely, even for you SSMers.
Jeanette Exner, your comment favors abolition of marriage in federal law and policy.
Thank you for echoing what the pro-SSM litigators said during oral argument in the CA supreme court case regarding the CA marriage amendment. That is: they would find acceptable the solution you proposed -- for the government to abolish marital status in state law.
That is the the inevitable conclusion of SSM argumentation, anyway. It is clearly an anti-marriage viewpoint. At least you were forthright enough to admit it.
Jeanette Exner also said: "Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) both conflic with the Constitution of the United States."
So you assert. Yet provide the argumentation and what do you really get? See my previous comment.
If government is to be barred from recognizing the union of husband and wife, aka marriage, then, marital status is unsustainable in the law and policy of any government.
Then why hitch the SSM idea to marital status? To destroy marital status, I suppose, but that might be an unintended consequence of most soft SSM supporters. But the SSM idea does not provide the justification for special status (marital status is a special status) nor for the eligibility boundaries that exist under current marriage law. Either way, the imposition of the SSM idea in place of the marriage idea leads to an unsustainable special status and so it leads to the abolition of marital status.
Maybe not immediately. But it is just a matter of time. Where SSM is promoted successfully, the nonmarital rates rise and rise with no end in sight except for virtual abolition in practice followed by erasure of the boundaries between marriage and non-marriage both in culture and in the law and policy.
And when the SSM idea is packaged with the supremacy of gay identity politics, much else becomes imperiled in a free society. Nothing justifies the gay emphasis and nothing justifies the supremacy of gay identity politics over marriage, the constitution, nor even social policy of this or that government at whatever level -- local, state, federal.