The telltale moment came during the federal trial challenging Proposition 8, which stripped away gay couples' freedom to marry in California. Chief Judge Vaughn Walker asked Charles Cooper, the attorney defending Prop 8, "What would be the harm of permitting gay men and lesbians to marry?" Cooper replied, "Your Honor, my answer is: I don't know ... I don't know." That pivotal exchange, and indeed the whole trial, showed that opponents of the freedom to marry are not able to defend their position on its merits.
When I was in law school, they taught us: If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the facts are against you, argue the law. If neither's on your side, pound the table.
A "pound the table" strategy is exactly what our opponents have opted for in court cases, in waves of ballot-measure attacks, and in the dust they throw up through the media. As Adam Liptak recounts in today's New York Times, the anti-gay forces now routinely rely now on diversion and fear-mongering to distract from the reality that when more committed couples join in marriage, families are helped and no one hurt. As Americans have begun to see that reality -- in the District of Columbia, as well as Massachusetts, Iowa, Canada, Spain, South Africa, and the other places that have ended exclusion from marriage -- so the opponents of gay people's freedom to marry have shifted to a succession of distractions: stoking fears about kids, making false claims about infringement on religious freedom, and, most recently, drumming up allegations of harassment and violence.
In early 2009, Frank Schubert and Jeff Flint, the architects of the California campaign, published a revealing article, "Winning Prop 8," confessing their strategy of deliberately avoiding a debate on the merits of gay people's freedom to marry because the majority of voters were opposed to revoking equality in marriage. In our opponents' own words, "Passing proposition 8 would depend on our ability to convince voters that same-sex marriage had broader implications for Californians and was not only about the two individuals involved in a committed gay relationship...[A] campaign in favor of traditional marriage [sic] would not be enough to prevail."
As anyone who followed the Prop 8 campaign knows, the "broader implication" Schubert and Flint selected was a fabricated connection between marriage and school curricula. They flooded the airwaves with tens of millions of dollars of advertisements conjuring up fears about "homosexual indoctrination" of children. To turn the tide in favor of Prop 8 Schubert and Flint by their own admission had to distract from a discussion of what the initiative really was about - eliminating gay people's right to marry - and whip up incendiary fears about schools and kids.
The latest round in this diversion strategy has been to claim that the perpetrators of the anti-gay ballot-measures are somehow themselves the victims of a concocted "harassment" campaign. The diversion has unfolded in much the same way the phantom "death panels" nearly hijacked the recent debate over health-care. First, the Heritage Foundation spun out a publication asserting that supporters of the anti-gay proposition had been "subjected to harassment, intimidation...[and] violence." This was then dutifully repeated by the likes of Rick Santorum, Ed Meese, Maggie Gallagher, and the now-familiar multi-million dollar right-wing echo-chamber. The anti-gay legal teams then filed briefs in courts quoting their own media to block the public's ability to watch coverage of the Prop 8 trial, and to hide the funding and support behind anti-gay ballot measures such as Prop 8 and Referendum 71, the 2009 measure in Washington State aimed at undoing, not the freedom to marry, but a mere domestic partnership law.
With the U.S. Supreme Court about to hear argument later this month in Doe. v. Reed, the concerted effort by the Referendum 71 groups to block Washington's longstanding disclosure rules on ballot-measures, the facts regarding the diversion strategy are now at last squarely in the public eye. Last week, the nation's leading gay legal organizations filed a powerful brief methodically refuting the bogus and "cynical" claims of victimhood and intimidation. The brief filed by Lambda Legal, GLAD, and others notes that, "When subjecting a minority group to political attack, a common tactic is to claim that the minority itself is the aggressor from whom protection is required." The real harms in this latest human rights struggle are the injuries, indignities, and inequality inflicted on committed same-sex couples denied the freedom to marry and the protections, responsibilities, and rich meaning marriage brings to families.
It's time to stop the table-pounding and allow Americans a conversation about the freedom to marry rooted in evidence, reason, and fairness. The diversion strategy of the anti-gay campaigners should not obscure the real truth of the matter: The reason smart lawyers like Charles Cooper don't give a better answer to why marriage discrimination should be allowed to continue is that there isn't one.
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I am as is my spouse the poster children for we want to spend our life together with ... See MoreALL the rights and responsibilities that go with the for better for worse for richer for poorer! As my spouse just lost his job due to the economy we are prepared for the worst but hoping for the best! I want to be with Keith come what may and as we look into the dark i.e. taxes we could have saved money if we could have filed joint federal income taxes! I had no benefits for health insurance with his soon to be former employer and we are now faced with being on all the programs that any married couple would file for once but we have to do it separately causing MORE paper work, MORE strain on the State/ Federal resources that are adding to our country's problems it that is trying to recover from! So I ask if we had the same marriage rights would we be hurting or helping our country?!
Is that what the right fears is that we will make them look bad or worse than they already do?
Forcing arranged marriage is, as so many like to say, un-American. We are mature adults who simply want the rights so many take for granted. Need I remind people about Brittney Spears marrying the first time because she was 'bored.' How about Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez? They both married after they were arrested for being serial killers and a child rapist, in Bundy's case. Where was the outrage then? Where were the calls for votes denying them the right to marry?
I think we lost prop 8 and 1 in Maine, because we fought the battle on the enemy's terms. Instead of portraying same-sex couples and families as healthy and happy, we were not portrayed at all. To win we need to create a real emotional connection with the voters - we need to take advantage of the power an image has to move people's emotions. We must show people who they are voting against so that same-sex couples do not remain second-class citizens under the law.
This month IN THE LIFE is doing a segment on Alix Smith's project "States of Union." States of Union hopes to change the hearts and minds of all Americans.
You can see the segment at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdO-vKX5J-E
States of Union can have a profound impact not only upon how we, as a community, see ourselves, but also on how society as a whole views us.
To learn more go to: www.statesofunion.com
With all major psychiatric/psychological associations stating that sexual orientation is not a choice, as well as a growing majority of Americans (even the proponents of Prop 8 have stated as such), it shows that orientation is an innate quality that cannot be changed and therefor should be a protected class under the nation's civil rights law (one can certainly choose NOT to act on one's orientation, like denying one's desire for lots of sugar or what not, but this doesn't mean the desire goes away. It's still there. A straight person could be celibate, but they're still straight). The CA Supreme Court has stated as such for the LGBT population.
Polygamy IS a choice. You CHOOSE to enter into more than one marriage. You're not BORN a polygamist. Polygamy is an action. Orientation is not.
So why the argument that recognizing one's orientation and their right to be in a relationship is a slippery slope to polygamy? It's illogical and ignorant. They are two completely separate issues not even under the same category.
This would generate lots of revenue for the state as well as protecting any offspring and the division of assets.
While gender discrimination and equal protection are the go-to arguments, the religious one seems more obvious to me; I've yet to see an arugment against same-sex marriage not based in religion.
But then again, we all know the Fundamentalists are the only "real Christian" perspective that should be taken into account (sarcasm off.)
I cannot fathom why people feel the need to dictate the relationships of consenting adults.
If freedom of religion is the argument, then wouldn't the religions that endorse gay marriage deserve their religious freedom to carry that out?
There is no legal argument whatsoever.
The religious right has utterly misconstrued the idea of free exercise of religion, by claiming that in order to freely exercise their religion, the law must reflect it, which, of course, the Constitution does not allow. That's why I think the religion argument is actually the easier one than gender.
and on your first point they should be able to have multiple wives if they concent to it.. what 2,3,or4 concenting adults do to from a family unit should nither be encouraged or denied by any government body
The 14th Amendment provides equal protection to ALL. It's that simple and don't try to make it more than it is.
And I would say that standing up for marriage rights would make one a left-wing liberal.
You're a Republican in wolf's clothing Sir.
Another question can be what is the harm in allowing the state to grant subsidies to all businesses? Can the state grant some subsidies to some while denying it to others? That question has been answered in the affirmative over many centuries. The SAME is true of marriage. It is NOT a denial of rights at all if one combination or business gets preferential treatment over others for the states own purposes.
I can think of many harms that come with gay marriage. One is the cost to the state in creating more divorces and court costs, family courts are so idle that they need more work. Then there is problem of child custody battles in unusual cases where there is NO case law to guide the courts. The other problem is that states which do not grant gay marriage cannot grant divorces since the union was not legal to begin with in those states. I can go on with a long list of things. In short, the state gets NO benefits out of granting gay marriages. You have to PROVE benefits to the state to have a leg to stand on in this.
You do NOT get to redefine marriage outside of the law to suit your prejudices. You have to do that through the legislative process. If Congress decides that gay marriage is to be allowed, then I have no problem with it.
I can think of more that come from heterosexual marriages.
As for benefits from hetero marriage, what do you mean by that? Marriage is NOT something others should ever be allowed to vote against between 2 consenting loving adults. No one voted for your marriage. Besides, marriage is a LEGAL union first before a religious one since you CANNOT marry without a marriage license (which by the way, all of us gays pay for with our taxes to have them administered to you straights)...
Standing up (ok, sitting down) for our rights!