TO: Christine
FROM: Alan Sears, President
To God Be the Glory!
California Court Grants Win for Marriage...That's 9 for 9 Nationwide...But The Battle is FAR, FAR from Over!
Just minutes ago, the California Court of Appeal overturned a San Francisco County Superior Court judge and ruled that the state's Defense of Marriage Act (Proposition 22) –- defining marriage as between one man and one woman -- is constitutional. ADF Senior Counsel Glen Lavy argued in favor of marriage before the court.
This is the case that came out of the "Valentine's Day" pseudo-marriage licenses that were issued to same-sex couples by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his city and county clerk in February 2004. While the California State Supreme Court (in a case argued by ADF Senior Counsel Jordan Lorence) ruled that the mayor had acted illegally and nullified the "marriage" licenses, the mayor's challenge to Proposition 22 continued through the court system. That challenge was consolidated with five other marriage cases that resulted from the mayor's illegal actions.
The court wrote: "Courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution as marriage. The role of the judiciary is not to rewrite legislation to satisfy the court's, rather than the legislature's, sense of balance and order....In other words, judges are not free to rewrite statutes to say what they would like, or what they believe to be better social policy."This is tremendous!
Special congratulations go to not only the ADF legal team, but to ADF allied attorneys Robert Tyler, Andy Pugno, and Terry Thompson who worked tirelessly on this case.
"The court today recognized that political special interests shouldn't trump what's in the best interest of families and children," said ADF Senior Counsel Glen Lavy. "Who's more important: our children or special interest groups? This court rightly put people before politics."
The full text of today's ruling in Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund v. City and County of San Francisco can be read at Prop 22 Opinion.
We praise God for this tremendous victory and the previous eight from this summer and we pray that the California Supreme Court, if this is appealed, will agree. But we must remain vigilant and not fall asleep. Those who seek to redefine, and eventually abolish marriage, are working 24/7 on new strategies to achieve their goal, and they are counting on us to think that the battle is over. Nothing could be further from the truth, as we await the decision from the New Jersey Supreme Court and argue for marriage in Maryland. Please pray God will grant us the funds and endurance we need to continue this fight...Read the ADF press release to learn more...
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7 comments:
Well, I am relieved. I mean, if it was suddenly legal for a state to recognize the union between gay couples that I'll never meet or deal with, well, I'd just have to lose all faith in my own marriage and get a divorce.
Honestly, why do you care? You don't know these people. They're not going to get married in your church. You and your fellow believers don't have to recognize their union. In fact, you're free to damn them to hell for all eternity until you turn blue in the face. I don't understand how the private lives of homosexuals is such a threat to you and your beliefs.
Limpy99,
Our main arguments for saving traditional marriage:
Marriage is between a man and a woman.
"Marriage" should not be whatever the law says that it is. The covenant relationship of marriage predates the law and the Constitution.
"Love" and "companionship" are not sufficient to define marriage. (If this were true, minor children and adults should be able to marry each other.)
If homosexual marriage is legalized, the floodgates will be opened for other groups of people to marry. By the same logic, we would be forced to allow a man to marry three women (polygamy) or a brother and sister to marry each other (incest) or, ostensibly, we'd have to let a man marry his dog (bestiality). Recently in Australia, a man married his T.V.!
Denying same-sex marriage is not "discrimination." A homosexual person has the same right to marry as a heterosexual person, he/she simply has to marry the opposite sex.
The sexual union of a man and a woman is the only way to naturally reproduce children.
Studies show that children need both a mom and a dad.
"Gay marriage" is either anti-woman or anti-man. It embraces the concept that one of the sexes is not needed for raising children.
"Gay marriage" is not about what two people do in the privacy of their own home. It's about the public approval of radically redefining traditional marriage. A public embracing of same-sex marriage affects all of society.
Before society jumps to legalize same-sex marriage, the fact needs to be addressed that, on average, homosexual men die ten years younger than heterosexual men. Perhaps encouraging "gay marriage" is not good policy for health reasons alone.
"Gay marriage" is a social experiment. No civilization in history has ever legalized same-sex marriage.
Our children are the ones who are the "guinea pigs" in this social experiment.
Ultimately, "gay marriage" is simply an attempt by a sub-group of people, identified solely by their sexual conduct, to obtain societal approval of their sexual behaviors.
If we re-define marriage, we will un-define marriage and it will become meaningless.
I could give you links to dozens of articles that would share precisely why redefining marriage would be detrimental to society. There are biblical reasons and secular reasons to not only oppose same-sex marriage in particular, but the affirmation of gay-behavior-indoctrination through public schools, in general.
The experiment of homosexual marriage in the Scandinavian countries proves the fact that marriage, as we now know it, would become more and more irrelevant. The confusion that erupts in the minds of children is a strong factor against it, too.
Want more reasons? It's about dilution, and, we already see the negative results of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. Parent's rights to raise their own children as they see fit is being destroyed through intimidation and lawsuits by pro-gay activists in the public schools there.
Enraged Gay activists show up and spew their hatred at Christian ministry events (Like Love Won Out) which are held to help those who want to escape homosexual behavior and attraction.
It has been my experience that despite evidence that backs up my reasons (and the majority of Americans, as well) for wanting to keep the several-thousand-years- old definition of marriage as being the union of one man and one woman intact, those who oppose us will not change their minds no matter what. It is a battle between ideologies that are polar opposites, and the excuses used by the other side are just that...excuses being used to destroy an institution that all cultures recognize (at one time or another, at least!) and that was originally instituted by God (as evidenced in the Bible).
With that said, if you are still interested in reading more articles, I will do a search at my message board and give you the links. However, if you think that you would never change your mind on this matter anyway, perhaps I should not waste my time researching and sharing such articles. It's up to you.
Just found another perfect example of how parent's (and students!!) beliefs and rights are being usurped by homosexual activism in public schools!
Canada's new leader is attempting to correct the current gay-agenda-machine which has become relentless and is threatening the traditional freedoms of religion and speech in that country.
Limpy99,
Even though it appears that you have stopped commenting here, I will include another really good article that shows directly why the legalization of "gay" marriage is most definitely a threat to me and my beliefs, as well as the beliefs of millions of Christians and Orthodox Jews.
Banned in Boston: The coming conflict between same-sex marriage and religious liberty.
Some points to consider from the article:
"Reading through these and the other scholars' papers, I noticed an odd feature. Generally speaking the scholars most opposed to gay marriage were somewhat less likely than others to foresee large conflicts ahead--perhaps because they tended to find it "inconceivable," as Doug Kmiec of Pepperdine law school put it, that "a successful analogy will be drawn in the public mind between irrational, and morally repugnant, racial discrimination and the rational, and at least morally debatable, differentiation of traditional and same-sex marriage." That's a key consideration. For if orientation is like race, then people who oppose gay marriage will be treated under law like bigots who opposed interracial marriage. Sure, we don't arrest people for being racists, but the law does intervene in powerful ways to punish and discourage racial discrimination, not only by government but also by private entities. Doug Laycock, a religious liberty expert at the University of Texas law school, similarly told me we are a "long way" from equating orientation with race in the law."
I sincerely hope that last comment holds true.
Chai Feldblum gets down to the crux of the matter.
"Not because I was caught up in the panic," she laughs. She'd been thinking through the moral implications of nondiscrimination rules in the law, a lonely undertaking for a gay rights advocate. "Gay rights supporters often try to present these laws as purely neutral and having no moral implications. But not all discrimination is bad," Feldblum points out. In employment law, for instance, "we allow discrimination against people who sexually abuse children, and we don't say 'the only question is can they type' even if they can type really quickly."
To get to the point where the law prohibits discrimination, Feldblum says, "there have to be two things: one, a majority of the society believing the characteristic on which the person is being discriminated against is not morally problematic, and, two, enough of a sense of outrage to push past the normal American contract-based approach, where the government doesn't tell you what you can do. There has to be enough outrage to bypass that basic default mode in America. Unlike some of my compatriots in the gay rights movement, I think we advance the cause of gay equality if we make clear there are moral assessments that underlie antidiscrimination laws."
But there was a second reason Feldblum made time for this particular conference. She was raised an Orthodox Jew. She wanted to demonstrate respect for religious people and their concerns, to show that the gay community is not monolithic in this regard.
"It seemed to me the height of disingenuousness, absurdity, and indeed disrespect to tell someone it is okay to 'be' gay, but not necessarily okay to engage in gay sex. What do they think being gay means?" she writes in her Becket paper. "I have the same reaction to courts and legislatures that blithely assume a religious person can easily disengage her religious belief and self-identity from her religious practice and religious behavior. What do they think being religious means?
To Feldblum the emerging conflicts between free exercise of religion and sexual liberty are real: "When we pass a law that says you may not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, we are burdening those who have an alternative moral assessment of gay men and lesbians." Most of the time, the need to protect the dignity of gay people will justify burdening religious belief, she argues. But that does not make it right to pretend these burdens do not exist in the first place, or that the religious people the law is burdening don't matter."
But IMO, she starts going in the wrong direction with these comments:
"You have to stop, think, and justify the burden each time," says Feldblum. She pauses. "Respect doesn't mean that the religious person should prevail in the right to discriminate--it just means demonstrating a respectful awareness of the religious position."
Then, she sides with the "sexual liberty" gay activists here:
Feldblum believes this sincerely and with passion, and clearly (as she reminds me) against the vast majority of opinion of her own community. And yet when push comes to shove, when religious liberty and sexual liberty conflict, she admits, "I'm having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win."
Religious liberty, freedom of association, and freedom of speech all should trump "sexual liberty." "Sexual liberty" may be an evolving matter in secular humanist circles, but I don't think that the framers of our Constitution meant for such a concept to trump what is already written in our founding documents!
I think I should do another blogpost and include a lot of these links and comments in it. Here is a link to The Evangelical Outpost blog where I found the "Banned in Boston" article. I think that if more evangelical Christians read that article, they will be awakened from the disingenuious mantra being espoused by the gay lobby and jolted from the slumber they are currently in regarding the morally relativistic thinking that "gay marriage can't hurt them."
We can vividly see that the legalization of "gay" marriage in Massachusetts has already resulted in several dire consequences against religious liberty in that state. It has already cause Catholic Charities to stop their adoption efforts there because their religious freedom of conscience, freedom of association, and freedom to conduct their work according to the Catholic church's teachings has been eliminated from consideration based on the trumped up "rights" afforded to "sexual liberty" activists.
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