Federal Judge Overturns California's Same-Sex Marriage Ban

[Dan]

A federal judge on Wednesday overturned a California ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that the Proposition 8 ballot initiative was unconstitutional.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaugh Walker, one of three openly gay federal judges in the country, gave opponents of the controversial Proposition 8 ballot a major victory.

Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread.

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume. That's because the judge said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge ordered both sides to submit written arguments by Aug. 6 on the issue.

Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.

California voters passed the ban as Proposition 8 in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.

"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," the judge wrote in a 136-page ruling that laid out in precise detail why the ban does not pass constitutional muster.

The judge found that the gay marriage ban violates the Constitution's due process and equal protection clauses.

"Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment," the judge ruled.

Both sides previously said an appeal was certain if Walker did not rule in their favor. The case would go first to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, then the Supreme Court if the high court justices agree to review it.

Walker heard 13 days of testimony and arguments since January during the first trial in federal court to examine if states can prohibit gays from getting married.

The verdict was the second in a federal gay marriage case to come down in recent weeks. A federal judge in Massachusetts decided last month the state's legally married gay couples had been wrongly denied the federal financial benefits of marriage because of a law preventing the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex unions.

The plaintiffs in the California case presented 18 witnesses. Academic experts testified about topics ranging from the fitness of gay parents and religious views on homosexuality to the historical meaning of marriage and the political influence of the gay rights movement.

Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson delivered the closing argument for opponents of the ban. He told Judge Walker that tradition or fears of harm to heterosexual unions were legally insufficient grounds to discriminate against gay couples.

Olson teamed up with David Boies to argue the case, bringing together the two litigators best known for representing George W. Bush and Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election.

Defense lawyers called just two witnesses, claiming they did not need to present expert testimony because U.S. Supreme Court precedent was on their side. The attorneys also said gay marriage was an experiment with unknown social consequences that should be left to voters to accept or reject.

Former U.S. Justice Department lawyer Charles Cooper, who represented the religious and conservative groups that sponsored the ban, said cultures around the world, previous courts and Congress all accepted the "common sense belief that children do best when they are raised by their own mother and father."

In an unusual move, the original defendants, California Attorney General Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, refused to support Proposition 8 in court.

That left the work of defending the law to Protect Marriage, the group that successfully sponsored the ballot measure that passed with 52 percent of the vote after the most expensive political campaign on a social issue in U.S. history.

Currently, same-sex couples can only legally wed in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/04/federal-judge-overturns-californias-sex-marriage-ban/

[Masha]

This is how you perform a "velvet" revolution. Through activist judges. They have the whole thing figured out.

[Dan]

just as we plug one hole another one opens up... the system is corrupt to the core!

[Masha]

The real question is what do you do when they have a system going on? The elections are rigged and the legal system is corrupted through activist judges? What can you do legally?

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

And people call this a "democracy"?

[Christian Zionist]

This federal judge is not for marriage equality.  He has done a terrible injustice to pedophiles who want to marry little children, millions of pet owners to marry their pets and parents to marry their own children 

[muman613]

This is a travesty of democracy... America has been a country where the majority has set the moral standards of the country. But advocate judges have overturned the will of the voters in order to impose immorality on the people.

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "And people call this a "democracy"? "

Yes.  They do.  Which is exactly why we are facing so many problems.

Because the nation is a Constitutional Republic; not a "democracy".

Democracy equals "mob rule".

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "What can you do legally? "

You have the legal right to secede from the Union.

[Ari Ben-Canaan]

Here is one clear cut reason to opposed gay marriage:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/media_nervous_on_new_duke_u_ra.html

June 28, 2009
Media nervous on new Duke U. rape case (updated)
Thomas Lifson
A new and even more scandalous rape allegation has surfaced at Duke University. Yet the usual media and campus PC crowd are keeping mighty quiet. Identity politics apparently trumps all sense of outrage.

Of course, after the disgraceful media and university reaction to the phony allegations against Duke Lacrosse team members, it is wise avoid jumping to conclusions, but the comparative silence on the current case is nonetheless remarkable, considering how many particulars of the case were left out of the main AP account.

Mike Adams, writing on Townhall, lays out the facts the MSM won't:

    Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he's declined to comment.

    University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a "perv dad for fun." The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.


It gets worse. The allegations are stunning and sickening. Adams spares us what he says is the worst.

However, identity politics are probably also involved in understanding the media response. Again, Adams:

    The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.


I am afraid that as far as the media and academic communities are involved, it is not the crime itself that matters, but rather whether the alleged perp is a member of an "oppressor" group. Although white, Lombard is gay, so in the interest of avoiding unpleasant stories involving homosexual adoption, the media is anxious to shut down public interest in the affair.

However, the outspokenness and willingness to judge in advance a case involving white jocks - easy targets - of Duke and media, inevitably place a spotlight on their handling of another Duke rape allegation.

Hat tip: Richard Baehr

Update: Thomas Lifson notes that Stanley B. Chambers of the Raleigh News and Observer (hat tip: C. Edmund Wright) brings is the following nugget:

    Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.


This means that Lombard toiled in fields of the victimology industry, mining data for correlations that would underwrite government favoritism of victim groups.

A victimologist victimized at least one child in the most heinous way. The ultimate victim(s). And the media see no hypocrisy, and want to make sure the public doesn't either. Nothing to see here, move along.

All this coming in the wake of another highly publicized incident at the same prominent university? I don't think they can  suppress this one. The conservative media have the power to put this case on the national agenda. It is too dramatic.

Obviously the media cannot be trusted because this story received ZERO attention in the mainstream media.  The truth about what some gays want to adopt children for would be far to enlightening for the public.  Only God knows how often these things occur, we certainly cannot trust the media to be our eyes and ears.

[Ari Ben-Canaan]

And more on one of the most under reported story in the American media in quite some time.

http://townhall.com/columnists/MikeAdams/2009/06/28/little_boy_blue_devil

Mike Adams
Little Boy Blue Devil

It looks like Duke University has another rape case on its hands. This one may hurt the university nearly as much as the one that rocked its campus back in 2006. Unlike the previous case, this one appears to involve a credible confession of sexual abuse. Like the previous case, crucial facts are already being filtered through the prism of identity politics.

Frank Lombard is the associate director of Duke’s Center for Health Policy. The university administrator was recently arrested by the FBI and charged with offering up his adopted 5-year-old son for sex. I tried to contact Frank Lombard over the weekend to probe his expertise regarding the health benefits of raping small children. So far, he’s declined to comment.

University administrator Lombard is accused of logging on to a chat room online and describing himself as a “perv dad for fun.” The detective who wisely looked into the suspicious screen name says that Lombard admitted to molesting his own adopted son. All this was before allegedly inviting a stranger to travel to North Carolina from another state to statutorily rape his already-molested adopted son.

If Lombard is convicted, he faces a maximum of 20 years in prison. His arrest comes about a year after the Court decided that child rapists cannot be executed because “society” has “evolved” to the point where such executions would be “indecent.”

If this case goes to trial, it could be an interesting one to watch. But it will be just as interesting to watch the Duke faculty respond to these allegations. It didn’t take them long to respond when several white Duke Lacrosse players were accused of raping a black stripper. A whopping 88 professors signed a statement accusing the players of both racism and rape. Such was their regard for the presumption of innocence.

Perhaps even more stunning was the response of some professors after it became apparent that the white lacrosse players were innocent. After that became so obvious the school had to readmit the students, Professor Kate Holloway resigned her committee assignments in protest. By the way, the most common form of faculty protest these days is to refuse to work. Most people think this kind of protest is caused by arrogance. But the actual cause is a thing called “tenure.”

So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard.

 Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn’t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?

Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name “cooper2” or “cooperse” logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.

The user name “cooper2” has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University’s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that “cooper2” has confessed to being “into incest” and that he has adopted two African American children.

The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard’s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard’s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child – sometimes even by drugging the child – to make sure his partner did not find out.

Records also indicate that Frank Lombard made a contribution to the Genesis Home in 2003. The Genesis Home is an organization that assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, in part by maintaining a child care center. The organization’s website features numerous photographs of African-American children under the age of ten.

The Associate Press (AP) did not mention the fact that the five-year old offered up for molestation was black. Bringing that fact to light might be damaging to the political coalition that exists between blacks and gays. Nor did the AP mention that the adopted child is being raised by a homosexual couple. Bringing that fact to light might harm the gay adoption movement.

I wrote this column because I believe that certain coalitions must be broken. And certain movements must be harmed. Let the political fallout begin.

[eb22]

just as we plug one hole another one opens up... the system is corrupt to the core!

Well said,  Dan.       This is yet another step in the United States going down a path to ruin.     

[cjd]

California is shot anyway... This is the least of the problems... California needs a top to bottom house cleaning... The problem is most of the population there likes things as they are going except for the states money problems that is.

[Dr. Dan]

This is such BS....what happened to this country?!  Democracy was put forth, the people voted for same sex marriage ban..and this judge can overturn what democracy allowed because he's a fag?!

[cjd]

This is such BS....what happened to this country?!  Democracy was put forth, the people voted for same sex marriage ban..and this judge can overturn what democracy allowed because he's a fag?!

Well this is only the start with animals like this legislating from the bench... Unless the people rear up and put the fear of G-d into the government this sort of thing will only get worse and worse... The first thing the people need to do is deal with the media.... At that point about 75% of the politicians might wake up to the fact that they have a constituency to answer to.

[david1967]

This country is now a corrupt dictatorship.  Obama and his Marxist judges have enforced another radical, Leftist policy despite the will of the American people.  This case will be appealed to the 9th circuit court of appeals.  Rush Limbaugh calls the 9th circuit court, the "9th circus", so what can we really expect from them?  Obama will appoint another of his Marxist judges to hear the case.  The U.S government is rotten to the core and democracy is dead.  Obama, the Democrat/Communist party, and his Marxist judges have enforced an extreme left-wing dictatorship upon the U.S. 

[Masha]

This is what Lawrence Auster wrote in View from the Right:

Well, I was wrong, at least regarding federal district court. Federal judge Vaughn Walker has thrown out Prop. 8 on “equal protection” grounds. The case will now go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and then the U.S. Supreme Court. However, if the Supreme Court ultimately upholds Walker and shoots down Prop. 8, that would be the equivalent of the survival of Obamacare: the decisive end of any plausible connection between the historical and constitutional America and America as it now exists. It will henceforth be impossible for any intellectually honest person to think of America as a constitutional system under the rule of law, since America will have become in reality a lawless system under the rule of radical leftist dictators.

[HiWarp]

Re:  "And people call this a "democracy"? "

Yes.  They do.  Which is exactly why we are facing so many problems.

Because the nation is a Constitutional Republic; not a "democracy".

Democracy equals "mob rule".

True. But in this case the "mob" rule, by the passing of the Proposition 8 ballot initiative, was overturned by a non-elected official. So the system is working as designed, according to leftists who favor legislation by activist judges.

Re:  "What can you do legally? "

You have the legal right to secede from the Union.

I would agree with this being the first step to freedom. If this fails, there's always revolution. Since, however, I don't believe the federal government will accept attempted secession by states without a fight, one may lead to another anyway.

[MassuhDGoodName]

Re:  "I don't believe the federal government will accept attempted secession by states without a fight, one may lead to another anyway. "

I agree.

It's a lose-lose situation.