g_b Listen to judges tearing apart homophobic arguments

[Vikram D vg...@yahoo.co.uk [gay_bombay]]

For all of us who were in court during the Supreme Court hearings on the Naz 
case and remember the awfulness of hearing Justice Mukhopadhaya responding to 
our lawyers arguments with total ignorance and prejudice, the audio in this 
link affords a certain irrational satisfaction.




Because it shows the opposite - judges tearing into homophobic arguments with 
incisive questions, humour and even contempt for what they are hearing. If the 
states lawyers weren't defending such rubbish it would almost be possible to be 
sorry for them!




http://www.towleroad.com/2014/08/7th-circuit-hears-challenges-to-same-sex-marriage-bans-in-indiana-and-wisconsin-listen.html




The audio is of the arguments against gay marriage heard in the 7th circuit of 
the US judiciary, which concerned Indiana and Wisconsin. The legislatures in 
these states had passed bans on gay marriage which courts in these states had 
struck down. The governments in these states appealed the courts decisions to 
the higher federal level, the 7th circuit, which can be seen like a level of 
judiciary between the state courts and the Supreme Court. Each circuit covers 
certain US states.




Gay marriage has been having a great run in the US courts and has got a lot of 
great decisions. This isn't a decision, and we don't know how the three judges 
hearing these cases will decide. But its still worth listening to even if you 
have no great interest in gay marriage in the US - and lets face it, when we 
are fighting for basic rights, these US battles can seem like an almost 
enviable luxury.




These recordings are still worth listening to because they give amazing 
examples of judges - judges! - totally demolishing, even ridiculing a lot of 
standard homophobic arguments. And what's amazing is the most incisive, 
dismissive, devastating judge is Richard Posner, who has a reputation as a 
conservative, but a thoughtful, intellectual one, and one who was appointed by 
Ronald Reagan. Posner is generally social liberal, but has not always been 
automatically supportive of all gay rights positions.




But here he is totally onboard. He is appalled at the way the states disregard 
the rights of kids of same sex partners and the effect that lack of marriage 
has on same sex couples. He is almost sneering at the argument from the states 
that they are not homophobic, but just "thinking about the kids". And his 
attack on 'tradition' as a basis for laws, which is at the start of the 
Wisconsin arguments (the second segment) should be printed out and pasted up in 
every legislature. 


And its not just Posner. The other two judges talk less, but they also have 
their moments. Listen to Justice David Hamilton incredulous "What?!" when the 
Wisconsin lawyer says that Loving vs.Virginia, which decriminalised interracial 
marriage in the USA was a deviation from common lawyer. Or when the same lawyer 
really desperately suggests his time is up - imagine a lawyer actually trying 
to stop arguing - Justice Anne Clair Williams jokes that that tactic isn't 
going to win.




Its amazing. Listen and weep for what judges unlike Mukhopadhaya and Singhvi 
can be like.




Vikram