Oh My YES on Proposition 8.

I am sure that Freedomfan will disagree on this, but Oh My YES on Proposition 8. Here's why: (1) Judicial tyranny and the usurpation of legislative powers, judges pronouncing as "final" issues that still need to be legislatively sorted out. (2) The dubious dogma behind "gay marriage". (3) There are disturbing societal consequences to redefining "marriage" and there is a compelling justification for "heterosexism", as the gay activists call it. (4) There is a rather sinister -- and totalitarian -- political agenda behind all this. Taking these one at a time:

(1) Judicial Tyranny (hat tip to Drew M. at AOSHQ)

Contrary to what the Left will claim (Waah! Hater!) I do not oppose some kind of legal code for same sex relationships. So if someone would say, "for homosexual relationships, we need to inventory aspects that marriage touches -- not testifying against registered sexual partner in court, innocent spouse provisions in tax code, survivors' benefits, joint tax filing, community property, domestic violence laws, child custodianship issues, intestate inheritance, hospital visits, etc., etc., etc.....and figure out what makes sense for government to be involved with, and figure out what the sensible arrangement should be, and figure out reasonable changes in the law to get to that point from where we're at" -- well, I might object on the details maybe, but I certainly could support such a legislative procedure.

In fact, the Legislature in California had already done this, with the Governor signing it into law.

However, four judicial tyrants in black robes, acting on the demand for some undefined notion of "equal protection", decided to butt into the legislative process.

PDF of decision is here.

I began reading, looking for quotes and key findings. But it was 172 pages long and took a while!

After noting the state's domestic partnership law is "virtually" the same as marriage, the court announces it's deciding the Big One. Examining the constitutionality of the current compromise regime under which...

"... the union of an opposite-sex couple is officially designated a “marriage” whereas the union of a same-sex couple is officially designated a “domestic partnership.” The question we must address is whether, under these circumstances, the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage violates the California Constitution."

So this is for full marriage, including the designation "marriage."

"It also is important to understand at the outset that our task in this proceeding is not to decide whether we believe, as a matter of policy, that the officially recognized relationship of a same-sex couple should be designated a marriage rather than a domestic partnership (or some other term), but instead only to determine whether the difference in the official names of the relationships violates the California Constitution."

After mouthing this platitude about judicial restraint the four tyrants in black robes then proceed to "discover" an always-existing constitutional right to gay marriage. Having discounted their own policy impulses and announced they would be deciding the issue based solely on the state constitution as written, they immediately announce their new "enlightened" understanding of homosexuality changes previous constitutional law:

"Furthermore, in contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

Whoa, now there's a leap. It's one thing to note that non-traditional child rearing arrangements happen, even frequently, it's quite another to boldly assert that raising children who are by definition fatherless (or in a few cases motherless) makes no difference to society and the State of California. And don't you know it, sexual orientation is treated as tantamount to race, dogma that is unfounded and frankly insulting to African Americans and other ethnics (more on dogma later).

Before this they make some pro forma claims, using italics to let you know this is somehow "constitutional law", that they've determined that marriage is a basic substantive right, which is just jargon for "we're going to overrule the legislature and the people acting through the initiative process, just because." That's really all it means. Categorizing something as a "fundamental" or "basic" "substantive" "right" is just a bit of judicial code for "We "progressive" tyrants get to decide and no one else does."

It is, in legal terms, an ipse dixit, an "it's this way because I say it is," and you can always tell when a court is resorting to ipse dixit because it stops citing the actual constitution and previous decisions and begins speaking of hitherto-unknown "fundamental rights." How did they become "fundamental rights"? Who knows?

The ipse dixits roll on. The right to establish a family becomes part of the living, breathing, sexy constitution, and with it comes the also newly discovered secondary right of that family to be treated with "equal dignity and respect."

In fairness, this is the "conclusions" part of the ruling, so a lack of citations is to be expected. However, of course, this being a new right and all, they won't have actual citations for any of these propositions later, either; that's part of what makes this new law, after all. There are no actual precedents!!!!

"We need not decide in this case whether the name “marriage” is invariably a core element of the state constitutional right to marry so that the state would violate a couple’s constitutional right even if — perhaps in order to emphasize and clarify that this civil institution is distinct from the religious institution of marriage — the state were to assign a name other than marriage as the official designation of the formal family relationship for all couples. Under the current statutes, the state has not revised the name of the official family relationship for all couples, but rather has drawn a distinction between the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples (marriage) and that for same-sex couples (domestic partnership). One of the core elements of the right to establish an officially recognized family that is embodied in the California constitutional right to marry is a couple’s right to have their family relationship accorded dignity and respect equal to that accorded other officially recognized families, and assigning a different designation for the family relationship of same-sex couples while reserving the historic designation of “marriage” exclusively for opposite-sex couples poses at least a serious risk of denying the family relationship of same-sex couples such equal dignity and respect. We therefore conclude that although the provisions of the current domestic partnership legislation afford same-sex couples most of the substantive elements embodied in the constitutional right to marry, the current California statutes nonetheless must be viewed as potentially impinging upon a same-sex couple’s constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution."

Oh puhleeze.

Next follows the typically slippery (and ipse dixit) "analysis" under equal protection. It's all a game of categorization -- if a law restricts a right the court categorizes as "fundamental" and imposes this restriction on the basis a "suspect" (i.e., what we judicial tyrants call "bad and wrong") classification, the court imposes a compelling/necessary test on the law, that the law must serve a compelling state interest and must be necessary to serve that state interest.

Now, that may seem like a test that can be passed under the right circumstances, but actually, it's not. No law ever survives that test, ever. Once the court has, by declaration citing the authority only of itself, categorized the classification as "suspect" and the restricted "right" as "fundamental," it's all over.

Any court just has to claim those magic words apply and it's all over. No deference whatsoever is owed to the legislature (or, in this case, the actual people of the state writing the law through the initiative process). The moment the court decides, on its own authority, to categorize (suddenly) the right as fundamental and the restriction of it as suspect, they rewrite the law however their consciences may impel them.

This passage begs the question:

"Finally, retaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite sex couples and providing only a separate and distinct designation for same-sex couples may well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise — now emphatically rejected by this state — that gay individuals and same-sex couples are in some respects “second-class citizens” who may, under the law, be treated differently from, and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite-sex couples."

This is of course pure rubbish, as "the state" did not in fact "reject" treating homosexuals differently as regards marriage law, but actually encoded this distinction into the law itself!!! Had "the state" wished to "reject" this distinction, it would have passed a different law specifically "rejecting" the distinction.

The court is speaking here, it seems, as a tyrant, "l'etat, c'est moi" (the state, it is I, I believe it goes).

California has the citizen's option to re-elect or reject judges for another term after they are appointed. Not only must we vote YES on Proposition 8 to stop this judicial tyranny, but also--the next time their terms come up, reject these four arrogant judges:
1. Ron George, nominated to the California Supreme Court in 1991
2. Kathryn Werdegar , nominated in 1994
3. Joyce Kennard, nominated in 1989
4. Carlos Moreno, nominated in 2001

As you can see, being nominated by a Republican Governor is no guarantee that judges will not become arrogant.

It is sickeningly hilarious / hilariously sickening how the "established precedent" of 35 years is the absolute last word on why we CANNOT overturn the abortion of legislative power (even those of us pro-choice can acknowledge that) that is Roe vs.. Wade, but 6000 years of history regarding the purpose and function of marriage??? Hell, that can be discarded at will.

"Precedent" only matters if it's a leftist commie liberal precedent, otherwise, "Stare Decisis? Whuzzat? Never heard of it!!!

"Perhaps the most revolting is the dogma that somehow marriage as is is "discriminatory" and discrimination is against the California Constitution. Wrong on both counts. Proposition 22 already made it clear what the people intended when the legislature passed the anti-discrimination laws (which pertained to employment, housing, etc., NOT marriage)

That's the sort of thing a judge ought to take into consideration when construing written language -- be it a contract, commercial paper, a statute, or a constitution, you always have to ask "what did the drafter likely intend?" The best datum to make that determination was the overwhelming passage of the proposition, and the Court ignored it.

Here, the Court not only ignored it, but fabricated their own reality to come up with their result. Now please don't take me for arguing that all legal questions turn on majority will -- they manifestly do not. James Madison wrote extensively against tyranny of the majority, as well as tyranny of the minority.

But the Cal. Supremes essentially had to claim that their constitution, which did not formerly mandate gay marriage, now does, and to so claim THAT, they had to pretend that society accepted that gay marriage is now a fundamental right. But that is simply a fraud. Empirically speaking, even in hard-core liberal California and Massachusetts, the only relevant datum shows that society has not demanded gay marriage -- that it has in fact done the opposite.

Contrast this with SCOTUS decisions prohibiting racial discrimination. When the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964 were legislatively passed, it proved that American society had in fact evolved to the point that freedom from racial discrimination was a fundamental right. The vast majority of Americans believed it, and they so manifested by through their political representatives.

When the gay marriage advocates can produce results like that, then judges can plausibly rule that gay marriage has become a fundamental right. But they can't just invent the facts.

(2) Dubious Dogma

A funny debunking of the dogmas behind gay marriage can be found here.

Tom McClintock, the last Honest Politician in this state, wrote this short but great letter on the subject:

The argument for "gay marriage" is founded on the premise that marriage is simply a profound statement of devotion made between individuals, and denying homosexual couples this option is therefore discriminatory. It is a classic case of a perfectly logical conclusion arising from a perfectly false premise.

Marriage is an institution through which we propagate our species and inculcate our young with the intrinsic social behaviors that human society requires.

A child does not ask to be brought into this world - it is summoned by the willful act of a man and a woman. By so doing, that man and woman acquire a profound responsibility to the child - and to each other in the raising of the child.

A body of law has grown up around this natural institution. A marriage is solemnized to legally establish the unique tapestry of duties and responsibilities inherent in raising a child. Spouses cannot capriciously walk away from their responsibility to the family they have created. Their resources and earnings are pooled to assure the mother has the support and security she will rely upon as she makes the sacrifices of motherhood. Inheritance is arranged so that the resources of the family pass immediately to the surviving spouse to carry on the responsibilities both have mutually entered.

Centuries of experience have shaped the legal status given to marriage. Not the least of this experience is that children acquire critical social understanding from both the mother and the father, and that such an environment offers by far the best chance of successful social and emotional maturation for the children. Other experience also enters into the law. Polygamy is forbidden because of the stresses it places on the stability of the home. Marriage involving unemancipated minors is forbidden, as is marriage between close relatives.

It is true that some marriages are childless by either fate or design. But that does not alter the fundamental institution or the desirability of a society establishing, maintaining and protecting it.

This traditional concept of marriage has been undermined to the point that a third of all children are today born out of wedlock. No-fault divorce laws have weakened the responsibility parents have to maintain a stable environment. Welfare laws have made fathers disposable by replacing their earnings with a more reliable check from the state. Out-of-wedlock births that were once the object of societal disapproval are now casually accepted.

And the societal damage is substantial. A wealth of sociological data warns that a child raised outside of a traditional marriage faces much greater obstacles in becoming a well-adjusted adult.

One aspect of the assault on marriage is the movement now afoot to blur the distinction between marriage and homosexual partnerships. And it's an important
distinction. A partnership exists when two or more individuals come together to associate with each other on mutually agreeable terms for a defined purpose. In partnerships the only responsibilities are to the other partners under terms
freely negotiated and agreed to by them. No third party is involuntarily summoned into it. A homosexual relationship is obviously in the nature of a partnership and not a marriage.

True, some homosexual couples seek to raise children. But such an arrangement does not alter the fact that it is a fundamentally different relationship than a marriage. Nor does it negate the child's right and need to draw fundamental and unique sociological guidance from both a mother and a father. No matter how loving and caring, a homosexual couple cannot offer that.

Abraham Lincoln once asked, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."

Nor does calling a homosexual relationship a marriage.

But let me go on to my own thoughts:

There is a dogma that somehow sexual behavior is an immutable characteristic, like race. Sorry, I know a good many women who had a period of same-sex experimentation, but can no longer be considered "gay" or "lesbian", as they are now married or otherwise steady with the opposite sex. I know of no one who stopped being "black". Calling "gayness" akin to "blackness" is, frankly, lameness.

Indeed, the whole nature of the "GLBT" Movement drops the lie on that idea. "B" is for bisexual, and "T" is for transgendered, or more accurately, those who mutilate their gender. Or even those who dress up and try to appear as the other gender. And those activities have waxed and waned over different cultures throughout history.

What I mean by that is, no one knows what percentage of the outwardly heterosexual population is actually bisexual, and might sometimes act on the homosexual side of their desires if it were much more socially acceptable to do so. But while no one knows the exact percentage, I think that many people in both the "straight" and "gay" demographics have a definite inkling that there are substantially more bisexuals than anyone is quite comfortable admitting. And anxiety about that drives a lot of the controversy over other gay-rights issues; if there were really a stark dichotomy between hetero and homo, and it were unheard of for anyone to straddle the fence or "switch teams" (and tear apart someone's marriage and kids in the process) then a lot of the other controversies would be relatively easy to settle.

There is also an undeniable trend to make bisexuality, among females anyway, chic. They even have Top Ten pop songs about it now. Young straight women making out with each other at parties was not happening at *any* of the parties I attended as a collegian 20 years ago. Now, it's become so ubiquitous in the culture that in a good many campus and twenty and THIRTYsomething parties you can't swing your arm out without knocking over two faux-lesbians kissing to the delight of their fellow party-goers. Now, is that because young women spontaneously decided to start making with each for no reason whatsoever, or has there been a culture shift in, for example, the entertainment media that gives young women the message that behaving like this is what they should do? I think you know the answer.

And if you do buy the "gayness is inherent" claim, then what about people who claim bisexuality? Are we to believe that they simply have to have sex with both men and women? If so, then I think we really are going to have legalize polygamy next. No compelling state interest in marriage between only one man and only one woman, means polygamy.

Now, I certainly wouldn't want to live in Saudi Arabia (home of the bin Ladens) or that wacked out FLDS neighborhood in New Mexico, or was it Utah. But that's exactly what's coming. Barack Obama himself was the product of a bigamous/polygamous "marriage" between a then 24 year old married man from Kenya and a then 17 year old girl (his mother).

The current gay response to the polygamy question is "oh come on" and condescension. Funny, that was the typical response to the demand for "gay marriage" 20 years ago.

I actually had a gay activist tell me that "Polygamy argues that the fundamental structure of marriage should be dissolved. Same sex marriage is an argument for inclusion in the institution as it already exists."

Absurd; that is just engaging in self-serving semantic games. The "fundamental structure" of marriage is and always has been in part defined by the fact that the people involved in one are of different genders. They're taking one requirement of the contract (the most important one by far, I would argue) and declaring it invalid simply because it's inconvenient to their personal belief system. You can't take the gender restrictions out of play and then pretend that the numerical ones are sacrosanct. Not convincingly, at least.

And this is where the hilarity and quite frankly disingenuousness of gay activists come in. They are willing to divorce marriage of a component, actually the key component...the one part that has never in the history of the institution changed, the sexes of the participants. And then they have the audacity to claim it's being changed unfairly to hurt gays? Can they say this with a straight (sorry, couldn't think of another expression) face?

"So just out of curiosity how do you explain homosexuality in the animal kingdom to your kids?" So said the same gay activists. Homosexual behavior happens (as does a sea lion trying to mate with a penguin), but it isn't the norm among creatures that require a male and female to reproduce, obviously. You'll also notice that most animals who engage in homosexual behavior will also mate with any animal of the opposite sex who comes along, as well as a tree stump or your leg. (It should be noted that rituals among animals that establish dominance or pecking order in a pack are not really sexual, and that some people interpret them as sexual says more about those people than about the animals!!!).

Some animals also kill and eat their young. I do not try to convince my children that this is normal, either. I do not use evidence of cannibalism in the animal kingdom to try to pass laws allowing cannibalism among humans. In fact, I bring up animal sexual behavior and animal cannibalism as rarely as possible.

Incest also occurs in the animal kingdom, along with chewing off another animal's leg (I've seen that twice in rodents). Indeed, animals will sometimes fight to the death or bite off each other's head (I'm thinking spiders here). Appealing to animals as role models for behavior is not something I often find it necessary to do. We ought to raise our children to be rise above animal impulses.

The nice thing about being human is that we can make choices. We can even make laws. We can say, "even if pedophilia FEELS right to me, maybe it's still wrong for me to act on that impulse." As thinking humans who are not controlled by our sexual impulses, we can also make choices about what constitutes a marriage, and in making that choice we can think about what's best for children. We can even go way, way out on a limb and decide that every marriage should include a potential mom and a potential dad, not two moms with no dad or two dads with no mom!!!

The definition of marriage has been the same throughout history, a union of a man and woman. Even the gay-friendly ancient Greeks didn't change that. A same sex union may be many things, but one thing it isn't nor ever will be is Marriage, no matter what any amount of Judges say. As I stated before, I could go with domestic partnerships, but calling those "marriage" is like calling a cat a dog because it, too, has four legs and a tail. It's still a cat.

Men don't have husbands and women don't have wives. Insisting otherwise doesn't make it normal or natural, and insisting on it does not make one "hateful" or "bigoted".

Reality on reality's terms, folks. Sorry.

(3) Societal Consequences and the need for "heterosexism".

The gay activists ask why this undermines marriage for the rest of us. The short answer is that undermines the purpose of state-sanctioned marriage: raising healthy kids. Out of wedlock births are already an epidemic in the US (and the reason for expanding, liberal government.)

Anything that waters down marriage isn't helping. To which I sometimes hear the rampant divorce argument. To which I can only reply, well, gee whiz, the institution is in enough trouble, so now you want to take it apart further???

One of our more annoying (and driving while intoxicated) politicians, Carole Migden, has her own way of taking it apart further.

Some might think that If two guys or two women (preferably not good looking, unless of course they are open to 3-ways, see bigamy and polygamy above--ha ha ha) want to legally bind their lives together, pay their taxes, own property, do some gardening etc. with or without children doesn't that benefit society? Sorry but no. We could acknowledge it with a domestic partnership or other sort of contract, and, sure, we could all wish them well. Happy for them. But how does that benefit society?

The state has a compelling state interest in the raising of healthy and happy children and this is best accomplished by marriage between a man and a woman. The government has been involved in marriage as long as I can remember in this country. When we made out of wedlock children to be the norm via no fault divorce law and welfare state regulations, we created millions of angry kids and the gang problem we have now.

(4) The sinister agenda -- totalitarian "politically correct" thought control

Once gay marriage is legally enshrined, won't it be illegal to give any favoritism whatsoever to heterosexual couples when assigning children to foster car or approving adoptions? Presumably, we won't even be allowed to consider the possible negative side effects because it won't be politically correct to do so. Brave new world.

Dennis Prager wrote a great column about all this:

Outside of the privacy of their homes, young girls will be discouraged from imagining one day marrying their prince charming -- to do so would be declared "heterosexist," morally equivalent to racist. Rather, they will be told to imagine a prince or a princess. Schoolbooks will not be allowed to describe marriage in male-female ways alone. Little girls will be asked by other girls and by teachers if they want one day to marry a man or a woman.

The sexual confusion that same-sex marriage will create among young people is not fully measurable. Suffice it to say that, contrary to the sexual know-nothings who believe that sexual orientation is fixed from birth and permanent, the fact is that sexual orientation is more of a continuum that ranges from exclusive heterosexuality to exclusive homosexuality. Much of humanity -- especially females -- can enjoy homosexual sex. It is up to society to channel polymorphous human sexuality into an exclusively heterosexual direction -- until now, accomplished through marriage. But that of course is "heterosexism," a bigoted preference for man-woman erotic love, and therefore to be extirpated from society.

Any advocacy of man-woman marriage alone will be regarded morally as hate speech, and shortly thereafter it will be deemed so in law. Companies that advertise engagement rings will have to show a man putting a ring on a man's finger -- if they show only women fingers, they will be boycotted just as a company having racist ads would be now.

Films that only show man-woman married couples will be regarded as antisocial and as morally irresponsible as films that show people smoking have become.

Traditional Jews and Christians -- i.e. those who believe in a divine scripture -- will be marginalized. Already Catholic groups in Massachusetts have abandoned adoption work since they will only allow a child to be adopted by a married couple as the Bible defines it -- a man and a woman.

Anyone who advocates marriage between a man and a woman will be morally regarded the same as racist. And soon it will be a hate crime.

Indeed -- and this is the ultimate goal of many of the same-sex marriage activists -- the terms "male" and "female," "man" and "woman" will gradually lose their significance. They already are. On the intellectual and cultural left, "male" and "female" are deemed social constructs that have little meaning. That is why same-sex marriage advocates argue that children have no need for both a mother and a father -- the sexes are interchangeable. Whatever a father can do a second mother can do. Whatever a mother can do, a second father can do. Genitalia are the only real differences between the sexes, and even they can be switched at will.

And what will happen after divorce -- which presumably will occur at the same rates as heterosexual divorce? A boy raised by two lesbian mothers who divorce and remarry will then have four mothers and no father.

We have entered something beyond Huxley's "Brave New World." All thanks to the hubris of four individuals. But such hubris never goes unanswered. Our children and their children will pay the price.

And this has already happened. Charities in Massachusetts shut down their decades long and very successful adoption services in MA after "Same Sex Marriage" was declared a "right" there. Why? Because MA state sued the charities for discrimination because they placed children with married hetero couples and didn't place with gay couples.

And this totalitarian push is happening with the teachers unions as well:

Here’s a pop quiz: Who’s donated the most money to an effort in California to defeat Proposition 8, an initiative on the November 4 ballot that would define marriage as between a man and a woman in the state?

A) Gay-advocacy organizations
B) Civil-rights groups
C) The California Teachers Association

If you guessed “C,” you understand the nature of modern liberal politics. And if you didn’t, perhaps you’re wondering what exactly gay marriage has to do with K-12 public education. The high school dropout rate is 1-in-4 in California and 1-in-3 in the Los Angeles public school system, odds that worsen considerably among black and Hispanic children. So you might think the CTA, the state’s largest teachers’ union, would have other priorities.

Yet last week the union donated $1 million to the “No on Proposition 8″ campaign. Of the roughly $3 million raised by opponents of the measure so far, $1.25 million has come from the teachers’ union. “What does this cause have to do with education?” said Randy Peart, a public school teacher in San Juan who was contacted by a local television station. “Why not put that money into classrooms, into making a better place for these kids?”

In fact, the CTA and its parent organization, the National Education Association, have used tens of millions of dollars in mandatory teachers’ dues to advance all manner of left-wing political causes. And members like Ms. Peart are right to ask questions. In some years barely a third of the NEA’s budget has gone toward improving the lot of teachers themselves.

In addition to vigorously fighting school choice and other reforms that benefit underprivileged children but threaten the public education monopoly, the NEA has directly (or via state affiliates) bankrolled Acorn, the Democratic Leadership Council, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and, naturally, the Human Rights Campaign, which lobbies for “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equal rights.”

Public school teachers of America, take note. This is your dues money at work.

Jeff Goldstein snarks:

B-but — who can be against “equal rights”? And how dare the WSJ question educators who are using their money to fight hate!

Why, they must be RACISTHOMOPHOBES! BURN THEM!

– Or, and here’s another (racist, homophobic) way of looking at it: why would the CTA and NEA presume to “speak” — and make no mistake: this is in effect what they are doing by requiring mandatory dues, and then using those dues to fight political policy battles — for the entirety of their rank and file as if that rank and file was politically homogeneous?

And the answer is, quite simply, that part of the requirements for membership in the fraternity of teachers is an acquiescence to the ascendant totalitarian groupthink narrative as defined by the union “leadership”. In this sense, heretical teachers are much like gays or blacks or women who wander off the liberal plantation and express individual ideas at odds with the sanctioned positions of their representatives — with the added indignity that they must continue to pay for the privilege of being misrepresented.

And then there are the parents, who in many instances have little choice but to take advantage of the public school system. Which means more and more these days, sending your child off to a left-liberal indoctrination camp dedicated to the politicizing of anything and everything in the curriculum (with some schools even mandating that each field of inquiry dedicate a portion of its time examining its precepts through the smudged lens of race and gender — making for some interesting lessons, no doubt, on the systemic oppression of fruit flies by an institutionalized white patriarchal logic). The personal being the political, it makes sense that the child under the charge of those who believe such a cheap bumper sticker attempt at mass contextualization be primed for his or her necessary political consciousness raising.

What does gay marriage have to do with the California Teachers Association?

Everything, if the the CTA is run by the likes of Bill Ayers and dedicated to his communistic vision of "social justice". Joe Sixpack probably sees this differently, which just proves how racist, sexist, and homophobic he really is.
Therefore his vote does not count. Joe: just shutup and pay your goddamn taxes. The CTA may not be able to influence you, but they can program your kid so that he will be one with the hive mind.

Oh well.

Indeed, many gay totalitarian types use "Same Sex Marriage" as the issue to shut down anyone that dissents from their "Party Line". A public school teacher that says marriage should be one man/one woman? Disciplinary action! A marriage therapist that won't take gay couples? License revoked. A wedding photographer that won't take a "Same Sex Marriage" gig? Business license revoked.... all cases that have already happened.

All based upon a twisted interpretation of the "Equal Protection" clause of the 14th Amendment.

Which raises an important question: does this twist on the Fourteenth Amendment trump the First Amendment? Because I'm telling you in no uncertain terms that being forced to recognize homosexual marriage as akin to "holy wedlock" by the State is tantamount to the State meddling - deeply - in the "free exercise of religion".

I would go so far as pointing out that such meddling is an example of the State respecting an establishment of religion ...in outright contradiction to the First Amendment ...to wit, it is tantamount to forcing the practice of leftist dogma as a quasi organized religion.

Hell, this current election is ALL about devout Leftists embracing an (Oba)messianic figure ...it creeps me out.

More directly illustrative of the point ...let's say I'm a preacher of some church, and the State says that regardless of my church's stand on marriage and sin, only it can sanction and license "holy wedlock" and choose whether to allow me to join couples as such together ...do you now see that it may be no stretch at all to see the State requiring me to perform such ceremonies? Or lose my license to perform such?

Or - as I see someone has already noted - say that I'm running an orphanage and I am now required to place children into homes where homosexuality is openly practiced.

You see, the problem isn't simply granting gays due process rights under the 14th Amendment by allowing them to legally marry.

Marriage is by definition ...of a Western (at least, if not only) cultural tradition dating back thousands of years ...the "joining together" of those of the opposite sex in a consensual contract recognized by law (of the State? OR by the Church? Or by what exactly). And therein lies the heart of the problem.

The problem is that for the State to grant (especially through judicial fiat) gays a "right" to what in essence is inherently a religious ceremonial concept - a religious ceremony that the State has usurped - ends up coming smack up against the First Amendment. Because marriage is NOT simply a civil matter: it touches upon fundamentally held beliefs of Judeo-Christianity which are at the core of Western culture.

This is a hot potato. First, judges are jerks whenever they rush pell-mell into the culture wars like this. Second, there is simply no give in Christianity about homosexuality ...none whatsoever. Third, there IS a constitutional crisis at the heart of this ...and it's being forced upon cultural Christians by gays ...and you bet your ass that they have every right to be resentful about it.

Surprisingly, given all that, that there is a "fair" solution in our modern society that acceptably meets both the First and Fourteenth Amendments. And that gays would likely agree meets due process. And that wouldn't harm the practice of marriage and the sanctity of the vows of holy wedlock within the Christian community.

Namely: the State should get out of the marriage "business" entirely. It should license only civil unions under state laws. Gays can - then - quit feeling like they're being legally dissed even though under law civil unions ALREADY have the force of marriage ...and us moralistic folks can go back to rendering unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God's.

Heh. Make you a bet: it ain't gonna happen ...not in the good ol' USA. Even Democrat politicians are smart enough to recognize that the day they propose such a thing - let alone try and enact it - is the day they are tarred and feathered and ran out of town on a pole. Let alone try and win an election. Americans won't put up with it ...especially us bitter clingers.

And really, militant gays won't accept it either (I'd point out that they have obviously not accepted it) because they don't simply want equality under the law: they want to force acceptance of their sexual practices upon those who find them abhorent.

Which brings us to the impasse.