Ernie :
The ruling is ludicrous. Indeed, just about all
pro-homosexual legislation is irrational.
Yes, the article is excellent, very informative. But it
misses the fundamental point--
which opponents of same sex marriage also habitually
miss, albeit for
different reasons.
The debate is currently framed as legal rights vs
religious bigotry. And the judge's ruling,
not even alluded to in the article, overtly ( overtly )
condemns ( condemns ) the Bible
for its 'homophobia.' That word was not used, but that is
the exact effect.
So the judge is saying that Christian morals are
unconstitutional. The corollary is that
the Bible ( or 20 books in the Bible, all the passages
where the issue is discussed,
which all condemn homosexuality ) is antithetical to the
Constitution as articulated
in the 14th Amendment.
Which is preposterous on the face of it. Except that the
Rubicon is directly ahead of us
and, if Kagan is confirmed as Supreme Court Justice, and
we all know who nominated her,
there is a real chance that this travesty of a decision
might become the law of the land.
Our professedly "Christian" president would then be in
the position of criminalizing
Christianity. Hopefully this is crystal clear. In the
process the outcome could also
be criminalization of all normative forms of Judaism as
well.
Denial mode, making excuses for Obama or rationalizing it
all away, would be
completely unjustifiable. BHO has set the stage and now
the drama has begun.
I have work to do, in addition to other work still
undone, but by God it will be carried
out to the best of my ability. This is a war against
religion, launched by the hard core Left
and by the homosexual population of the country.
It is a war we cannot afford to lose, it is a war we
absolutely must win.
Everything else is more important ? You --anyone--
cannot be bothered
to study the subject and make yourself genuinely informed
? Actually,
not to do so would be a major moral failure. To simply
read the standard crap
that the MSM refers to, BTW, would not constitute
becoming informed, for
all that such literature does is to propagandize for
homosexual activist views.
I'm talking about serious psychoanalytic studies,
sociological studies by
competent researchers rather than homosexuals,
neurological studies
by honest brain researchers, and all of that. Reading the
usual fare that
the schools dish out, or human rights commissions dish
out, is just about
completely worthless.
But , to return to the point, the most effective grounds
for overturning this ruling,
and ALL other similar rulings, is NOT legalistic
argument. . It is empirically
establishing the fact that homosexuality is a mental
illness, and that it is absurd
to give "rights" to the mentally diseased to indulge in
or promote their grievous sickness.
About this, there is an abundance of hard data, which you
know I have collected
and have already written about extensively. With more to
come, a lot more.
There can be an adjunct argument, homosexuality is a
form of immorality that is
antithetical to all legitimate standards of conduct which
the Constitution assumes
or expresses overtly.
And the argument can also be made that the judge's
ruling, in one fell swoop,
not only guts the Bible, which he seems to hate,
but also constitutes a direct
attack on the morality of various Buddhist sacred texts,
of various Hindu scriptures, etc,
of Mormon doctrinal statements, and also of the Qur'an.
As much as the Qur'an
usually disgusts me, one thing to say on its behalf is
that it also takes an
uncompromising stand in opposition to homosexuality in
any form.
What I believe will happen on the Right is more of the
same, more appeal
to Christian faith and its precepts as the only
legitimate counter to the ruling,
a tactic that simply cannot win in any high court. That
is, the Right is stupid
on this issue, morbidly stupid. This also is disgusting,
and I know from experience
that people on the Right, speaking of everyone who might
be called a leader
--about which I hope I am dead wrong-- refuse to listen
to anyone else except
other Rightists. Their short-sightedness is suicidal and
just about inevitable.
OK, if I must be a solitary voice "crying in the
wilderness," at least for now,
that is exactly what I am prepared to do . For the simple
reason that
it has always been this way and why should it be any
different now ?
To sum it up, today's ruling is Satanic. Not that it is
possible to use this word
in making a legal case that can be taken into court, but
to express my honest
sentiments as forcefully as possible.
Billy Rojas
===========================================================
In a message dated 8/4/2010 5:03:03 P.M. Pacific Daylight
Time,
[email protected] writes:
The least inflammatory
analysis I could find on today's ruling...
-- Ernie P.
P.S. I for one expect
Sarah Palin to jump on this issue with both feet, even
if one ends up in her mouth :)
8.04.2010
In a ruling that had been widely anticipated, Judge
Vaughn Walker of the Federal District Court in San
Francisco
today
decided that California's Proposition 8 -- which
was narrowly approved by the state's voters in 2008
and amended the state's constitution to define
marriage as between a man and a woman -- violated the
U.S. Constitution on both due process and equal
protection grounds, thereby striking it. The decision
is eventually expected to be appealed up to the U.S.
Supreme Court, where its fate will probably be in the
hands of Justice Anthony Kennedy.
One of the distinct features of the 2010 campaign to
date has been a relative lack of discussion around gay
marriage. There are a variety of reasons for this --
there are no marriage ballot initiatives before the
voters this year, for instance, and the country has a
whole host of other, more tangible problems to deal
with. But can we expect this to change with Judge
Walker's ruling today?
The issue is certainly unlikely to be pushed into
the spotlight by Democrats. Most polls still show at
least a plurality of Americans opposed to gay
marriage, although the margin
is narrowing. More important, perhaps, is that
the fact that President Obama is at least nominally
opposed to gay marriage, as were the other two
leading Democratic candidates for the Presidency in
2008, Hillary Clinton and John Edwards. As I wrote
on Twitter, this is a fact that may come to seem
remarkable with the passage of time, as most
Democrats support same-sex marriage. Nevertheless,
given the White House's sluggish pace in working to
overturn Don't Ask Don't Tell, a doctrine which is
overwhelmingly unpopular, we are exceptionally
unlikely to see a change of attitude on a related
issue where the polling still cuts against them.
So it will come down, therefore, to what
conservatives want to do with the issue:
particularly two groups of conservatives, which we
might loosely think of as the Tea Party and the
Republican Establishment.
Although polling has shown that large majorities of
Tea Party identifiers, like most Republicans and
conservatives, are opposed to gay marriage, it has largely
avoided discussion of the issue. The extent to
which this has been a deliberate strategic choice is
unclear, as the Tea Party is unusually
decentralized. Nevertheless, it is arguably quite
smart. The Tea Party has been successful, in part,
because it feels fresh and new to many voters,
distinguishing itself from Bush-era establishment
conservatism and sometimes taking on the auspices of
libertarianism. Were the Tea Party to come out
strongly against gay marriage, or take explicit
positions on other social issues like abortion and
marijuana legalization, it would become
indistinguishable from movement conservativism circa 2004, and
would risk undermining the differentiation in its
brand.
For the Republican Establishment, the calculus is
somewhat different. They make no bones about being
emphatically opposed to gay marriage. But a focus on
the issue might look petty in comparison to
weightier ones like unemployment, the deficit and
health care, all of which are providing them with
considerable momentum on their own.
However, the ruling today is potentially a
game-changer in that it will allow both groups to
frame the issue as one of judicial activism, rather
than "family values". This line of attack makes for
cogent soundbytes, and it will arguably be quite
salient to voters, as Walker overturned a referendum
passed by the majority of California's voters a mere
21 months ago. The less equivocal among the
Republican Establishment may try to bolster their
case by pointing to the fact that Walker
himself is gay.
The fact that the issue is now almost certain to
come before the Supreme Court also renders it less
abstract than usual. Were Barack Obama to have the
opportunity to replace a conservative Justice with a
liberal one, or an incoming Republican President in
2013 the reverse, that would probably be decisive
for the issue, perhaps for many decades.
My best guess is that the Tea Party will largely
continue to shirk the issue, but that the Republican
Establishment will be fairly happy to engage it. The
real battle, however, may come in 2012, when the Supreme
Court could be about ready to take up the case.
The leading indicator may be the reactions of the
major Presidential hopefuls. For instance, will
Sarah Palin produce a tweet or Facebook post
containing the the phrases "activist judge" or
"judicial activism" within the next 24 hours? It may
depend on which type of conservatives -- the
tea-partiers, or the movement conservatives of the
Republican Establishment -- that she ultimately
wants to affiliate herself with.
--
Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community
<[email protected]>
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism
Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
