Schwarzenegger: Prop 8 May Violate US Constitution

LA Times:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today told a federal court in San Francisco that the state does not dispute that Proposition 8 may violate the federal Constitution and called for quick action to resolve the legality of the ant-gay measure law.

"Plaintiffs' complaint presents important constitutional questions that require and warrant judicial determination," the governor said in a written response to a federal challenge of the anti-gay marriage ballot measure.

Read the whole story: LA Times

Comments

[superstition]

Obama deputy campaign manager abandons DOMA & DADT as priorities
http://www.americablog.com/2009/07/obama-deputy-campaign-manager-abandons.html

"After two weeks of the Obama White House reeling over the gay backlash caused by the anti-gay DOMA brief, which compared gay marriage to incest and pedophilia, we now have...

First, that the burden for doing anything pro-gay in the remaining three and a half years of the Obama administration is now shifted to Congress. Obama has no role whatsoever, and no power to influence anything, even though he's still the leader of the free world.

Second, the three big gay rights priorities that Congress should be focusing on do not even include what have organically become the community's top two priorities: repealing DOMA and Don't Ask Don't Tell. They're not even mentioned in the Obama deputy's essay."

[KriTiKiT]

yo Arnold, way to go... it does violate the us constitution... our right to pursue happiness, and have all the same rights afforded to every individual... then the state law would be dead wood

[JeremiahA]

One more claim is that marriage is not about birthing and raising the next generation of children because some heterosexual couples do not have children. This is a red herring argument.

A barren marriage, by choice or design, does not nullify the higher purpose of marriae. A school may be used as a polling place on election day, but that does not change the fact that a school is a place of learning. In the same way, marriage is still essentially the building block of society, even if in some couples the basic purpose of marriage is not actualized. History, observation, and common logic dictates that a father and a mother offer the ideal environment to produce successful future members of society. We would not have reached in this point if this were not true.

Some gay couples do have children, and we should not punish those children for the selfish, narcissistic decision of their gay caretaker(s). Those children should be given all of the understanding, caring, and counseling available, and if there gay caretakers are unwilling to pay for such counseling, then I feel society should take up the burden.

No-fault divorce has devalued marriage. Narcissistic single people having children out of wedlock have devalued marriage. Do we really want to take another step and devalue marriage to the detriment of us all, heterosexual or homosexual?

[BlackWidowPilot]

Marriage has traditionally and historically been about rights of patrilineal inheritance rather than anything else.

Being gay is an orientation, not a mere lifestyle choice.

Loving vs. Virginia established the precedent of the right of two consenting adults to marry.

Or do you believe that two people should be denied the right to marry if they are unable r unwilling to have children?

You received your training in Psychology or Psychiatry *where* again? Childhood Development?

Do tell.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

PROTESTant

[BlackWidowPilot]

All you have done is repeat a series of specious canards and non sequiturs and declare them facts.

Where did you receive your degree in Psychology? Psychiatry? I know where I received mine, and your entire post is an exercise in pseudo-scientific revisionism to suit an authoritarian political agenda, citizen.

You keep complaining about an "Activist court;" Loving vs. Virginia was the result of an "activist court," Jerry. Shall we invalidate all inter-racial marriages on the basis of your personal and thoroughly twisted interpretation of The Rule of Law enshrined in our Constitution?

Loving v. Virginia did *indeed* redefine marriage as it had been practiced and understood in this country -especially in those sixteen states which enforced their so-called "anti-misc­egenation" laws, which were the will of the *majority* in those states, and the will of the majority of Americans polled at that time.

As I stated to your fellow "Bushevik", Jerry, you're standing on the wrong side of history, science, and right from wrong.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

PROTESTant

[JeremiahA]

Several claims have been made by gay activists.

One, that a majority opinion is not always right, i.e. a worldwide majority not wishing to redefine marriage. However, minority opinions are not always right, either. Example...NAMBLA.

Two, that the issue of gay marriage is only about equal rights. Not according to TIME magazine and the Boston Globe.

"...ultimately, of course, the battle for gay marriage has always been about more than winning the second-driver discount at the Avis counter. In fact, the individual who has done most to push same-sex marriage--a brilliant 43-year-old lawyer-activist named Evan Wolfson--doesn’t even have a boyfriend. He and the others who brought the marriage lawsuits of the past decade want nothing less than full social equality, total validation--not just the right to inherit a mother-in-law’s Cadillac. As Andrew Sullivan, the (also persistently single) intellectual force behind gay marriage, has written, "Including homosexuals within marriage would be a means of conferring the highest form social approval imaginable." [emphasis added]..."--"Will Gay Marriage Be Legal?" TIME magazine

"They cloak their demands in the language of civil rights because it sounds so much better than the truth...They want it (marriage) to be given a meaning it has never before had, and they prefer that it be done undemocrat­ically--by judicial fiat, for example, or by mayors flouting the law. Whatever else that may be, it isn't civil rights."--The Boston Globe

[BlackWidowPilot]

Back in 1967 there was a married couple named Loving. Their marriage was *illegal* in sixteen (16) states, and the majority of Americans polled *opposed* their marriage many on the grounds of a heartfelt belief that the *Bible* condemned such unions.

Fed up with being harassed by police for no other crime than being a marriage comprised of a white man and a black woman, Richard Loving took his case to the Supreme Court.

That was 1967, and the Supreme Court ruled that those laws prohibiting inter-racial marriage were unconstitutional. The justices did so in direct defiance of popular opinion, and solely on the basis of the cold, hard facts of the case, and the content of our Constitution, and simple human decency.

Prior to Loving vs. Virginia, the woman I am now married to, the wonderful, elegant, amazing, talented *soulmate* that God has blessed me with, well, if it were 1967 our marriage would be *illegal* in sixteen states and the *majority* of Americans would think our marriage *wrong,* and many would no doubt assert that "the Bible says so!"

Being gay is an *orientation,* not a "lifestyle choice," and any first semester Psychology or Human Biology student knows this to be a scientific fact. To continue to discriminate against the fundamental human right of consenting adults to marry while denying the actual facts of the matter is the height of intellectual dishonesty in the service of a morally bankrupt authoritarian political agenda.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[JeremiahA]

No one disputes that gays have a predisposition to homosexuality, as do people to anger, depression, and so on. However, environment plays an equally major role in how such predispositions are managed.

And yes, some large medical and psychiatric groups have made positive statements in favor of same-sex parenting. However, only the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) did any analsis of the research, which was notably weak and parroted by the APA, AMA, etc.

The AAP looked at a relatively small handful of studies which only examined white, almost entirely middle-class lesbian-headed families. They made NO use of or reference to the larger body of solid and diverse literature showing which family forms most strongly and consistently contribute to key measures in child-well being.

James Q. Wilson's work shows that children raised in by gay caregivers are more likely than those in [mother/father] families to be suspended from school, have emotional problems, become delinquent, suffer from abuse and take drugs.

Scholars from the universities of Texas, Virginia, Minnesota, Chicago, Maryland, Washington, UC Berkeley, and Rutgers University reported that children who live with their own married mother and father live longer, healthier lives, both physically and mentally, do better in school, are more likely to graduate and attend college. They are less likely to live in poverty, abuse alcohol or drugs, be violent or sexually active, or be victims of sexual or physical violence.

Should we be using children as social experiments by redefining marriage?

[superstition]

"I believe that freedom and justice cannot be parceled out in pieces to suit political convenience."

-- Coretta Scott King

"For too long, our nation has tolerated the insidious form of discrimination against this group of Americans, who have worked as hard as any other group, paid their taxes like everyone else, and yet have been denied equal protection under the law."

[drbillybob]

Obama obviously thinks Prop 8 is constitutional ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73oZ_pe1MZ8

[NWBrunette]

He's clearly irrelevant.

[CaliforniaLove]

Obama or you? One is the President of the U.S. and leader of the free world, and the other is an anonymous poster on HP. Care to compare resumes?

[Aabby]

the President? The same President who opposed prop 8? wow lol

[RustyNeverSleeps]

weird.

[zabbadu]

Curious. Does this make him an activist governor? 'Cause that's the label given to judges who do their jobs and interpret the law.

[BobSF94117]

Ahnuld is like a ping-pong ball. You can watch him bounce back and forth on gay rights from liberal to conservative, depending on his need at the moment.

Pathetic.

[drbillybob]

An Austrian body-builder, critically acclaimed actor and a US constitutional scholar. What range.

[ThinkCreeps]

The legal issues here are so simple that any actor, body builder, or even Austrian (!?) is very well positioned to understand. What is about your thought processes that put you behind these groups in the line for getting a set of brains?

[drbillybob]

Are they really that simple? Can you prove homosexuality is an inherent genetic property? Can you prove that it is not a largely behavioural choice?

Of course you can't. That's what might make it different than race ... get it?

[BlackWidowPilot]

At least Ah-nold grasps what you so willfully seem to ignore:

http://www.apahelpcenter.org/articles/article.php?id=31 http://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/guide/sexual-orientation

https://www.msu.edu/~alliance/faq/faqsexualorientation.html

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/06/30/genetics-and-environment-shape-sexual-orientation/2522.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071107170741.htm

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/node/6626

http://news.stanford.edu/pr/95/950310Arc5328.html

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/113259.php

http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Genetics_plays_role_in_determining_sexual_orientation.asp

And you received your training in Psychology where, again? Your certification in Psychiatry (MD) at what university?

Do tell.

Leland R. Erickson

Citizen

[TJCole]

Yes, if California takes Federal Funds than under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act it's in violation or can be argued it's in violation, and thus in violation of the 14th Amendment...as well and violates the U.S. Constitutional...

All government funds are fungible..!

[drbillybob]

Only if one assumes homosexuality is innate and not behavioural ...

[ThinkCreeps]

And your MD is from where? The Wasilla college of knowledge?

[whocan]

no Arnie , that it does not.....There are parameters that have been set for marriage in California similar to getting a drivers license . The courts have upheld these parameters. They need to be changed and hopefully soon... But not a constitutionality issue

[Skyhawk]

No shiat.

[independentrepublicrat]

I didn't know the governator was a lawyer, much less a constitutional scholar. ...discover something interesting everyday.

[myscreennameistoolong]

What constitution?

http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/www/NoTreason/NoTreason.html