Ruth Institute Blog

OK, is this not a full frontal attack on our right to freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and even our freedom of religion, even freedom of thought, no less? Have the advocates of same-sex so-called ‘marriage’ not always vowed that would never happen? But are they not now demanding that everyone else (especially newspapers) call their relationship a ‘marriage’ just because they say that’s what it is, whether or not any of the rest of us happen to think it is so?

Reed-Walkup and Walkup, and that is not a law firm, tried to pay the Dallas Morning News to run a wedding announcement. Officials with the paper, citing the legal status — or rather illegal status — of same-sex marriages in Texas, said, no, no thanks but the announcement can run under the heading “Commitments.” Read more…

From the FRC article:

As the president of the Family Research Council (FRC), an organization that has filed amicus briefs defending both Proposition 8 and DoMA, I am troubled by the lightning-fast integration of concepts and actual language from the Attorney General Letter into the Motion to Vacate Stay. Let me repeat: the Motion was filed within two-and-one-half hours of Attorney General’s press conference. Consequently, I am deeply concerned that officials at the Department of Justice were collaborating with the litigants in the Proposition 8 case. Even the appearance of collusion between the Department of Justice and litigants is highly damaging to the rule of law in America.

When the so-called ‘justices’ of the California Supreme Court, in their ruling overturning Proposition 22, commanded the State to recognize same-sex ‘marriages’ immediately – in the face of warnings that those ‘marriages’ would be be the source of enormous legal confusion when Proposition 8 passed – it was a case of the judiciary attempting to deny the people their right to self-rule (Proposition 22 passed by 61%) and it was a very transparent attempt to influence the outcome of Proposition 8, and it was an obvious attempt to make the will of the people utterly irrelevant anyway by making same-sex so-called ‘marriage’ a fait accompli irrespective of any constitutional requirements. Read more…

DallasVoice.com:

The court’s brief announcement said it would hear arguments on an expedited schedule and asked that the first briefs be due March 14 and that oral argument take place as early as September.

Do the words “official duty” mean anything to guys like Barack Obama or Jerry Brown? How about “oath of office”?

But at least we can be certain they know about “collusive litigation”?:

…the Obama Justice Department’s defense of DOMA maintains a pattern that a distinguished scholar has termed “almost like collusive litigation”—that is, where presumed adversaries are actually seeking the same result. The Obama Administration is indeed all but abandoning DOMA—but not in the forthright manner that would result in a real battle in the courts where both sides of the controversy are represented. Read more…

From USA Today:

Three Iowa Supreme Court justices lost their seats Tuesday in a historic upset fueled by their 2009 decision that allowed same-sex couples to marry. Vote totals from 96% of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts showed Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices David Baker and Michael Streit with less than the simple majority needed to stay on the bench. Their removal marked the first time an Iowa Supreme Court justice has not been retained since 1962, when the merit selection and retention system for judges was adopted.

People don’t appreciate judges legislating from the bench.

In a statement issued early Wednesday, the three justices said: “We hope Iowans will continue to support Iowa’s merit selection system for appointing judges. This system helps ensure that judges base their decisions on the law and the Constitution and nothing else. Ultimately, however, the preservation of our state’s fair and impartial courts will require more than the integrity and fortitude of individual judges, it will require the steadfast support of the people.”

It depends on your definition of “merit.” Other courts, state and federal, have failed to discover a right to same sex marriage. It is disingenous for these justices’ to try to brazen it out by claiming that they based “their decisions on the law and the Constitution and nothing else.” They are assuming the very thing that needs to be proven, and which Iowa voters believe cannot be proven, namely that there is an open and shut case for same sex marriage to be found in the Iowa Constitution.

I follow changes in the marriage debate across the country and around the world. I’m often surprised as I travel around that not everyone follows these things as closely as I do. So, one of my jobs is keeping ordinary people informed about strange goings-on in other parts of the country.

For instance, my audience in Kalamazoo Michigan last week was generally unaware that Iowa had same sex marriage. Yes, says I, same sex marriage in Iowa of all places. Judges did it in 2009 in a case called Varnum v Brien. I think it was a lousy decision.

So for the benefit of those new readers who joined the Ruth blog and the newsletter list in the last week or so, I am linking to a couple of articles I wrote about the Iowa same sex marriage decision when it was handed down. One of my articles was called “The Institution formerly Known as Marriage,” and was published by the Witherspoon Institute. The other was called, “How Marriage Lost in Iowa,” and was published in the National Catholic Register. If you have friends in Iowa, go ahead and forward these articles to them. Get their opinion of these articles and of the decision. I’d love to hear from some Hawkeyes about this!

The judges in Varnum v Brien made very clear what some of us have been saying for a long time: same sex marriage doesnt’ just let more people join in to the existing institution of marriage. Same sex marriage redefines marriage, downgrading its essential public purposes and leaving nothing but inessential private purposes. The judges in Varnum demonstrated this point, unwittingly, I am sure. Here is what I wrote about the case when it came out:

if the purpose of marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to their children and to one another, then the dual gender requirement is perfectly permissible. Same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are not the same with respect to this purpose. The Court had to come up with a very limited understanding of the purposes of marriage in order to maintain that opposite-sex and same-sex couples are in fact similarly situated. Read more…

This is what eventually happens when shortsighted fools use the courts to crush the will of the people:

James Joyner notes that there’s much wailing and gnashing of teeth on the left side of the blogosphere over the relatively narrow margin by which Elena Kagan was confirmed by the Senate: Read more…