California Family Minute
August 9, 2010
Traditional Marriage Outdated?
by Rebecca Burgoyne,
CFC Research Analyst
Like the proverbial “shot heard ‘round the world,” the decision in a California federal courtroom last week reverberated from shore to shore and throughout the global community. Judge Vaughn Walker, a single, 66-year-old man living in San Francisco denied the votes of 7 million Californians who had thoughtfully placed the time-honored definition of marriage into the state Constitution. The judge wrote that excluding homosexuals from marriage “exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and marriage. That time has passed.”
While not unexpected, the decision was predictable from a judge who from the beginning seemed intent on steamrolling proponents of Proposition 8 while giving gay marriage proponents a public stage to air their beliefs and complaints. The decision – declaring there is absolutely no difference between homosexual marriage and heterosexual marriage – was troubling for its willingness to blur the lines between accepted social science evidence and propaganda.
The outrage was immediate, as the judge’s broad approach rejected and insulted the beliefs and opinions of religious people and families – making wide-ranging pronouncements about law and social science and rubber stamping the arguments put forward by plaintiffs’ lawyers. Walker wrote, “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.” Claiming that gender no longer matters in marriage, Walker summarily dismissed time-tested substantiation that children do best with both a father and a mother, and instead painted a case for the normalization of homosexual child-rearing, behavior, and families.
While the decision is only one step on the way to the United States Supreme Court, it is taking root in the consciousness of millions of Americans – celebrated as a historical landmark by homosexual activists and identified as a potential Roe v. Wade of marriage by conservatives. If nothing else, the decision has aroused the sleeping public with a new awareness of judicial activism – at a time when Californians are already reacting to the excesses of government, and nationwide a movement has begun to reassert “the people” into a government that seems to have forgotten its power is derived from the people.
Read selected quotes from the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision compiled by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).
Traditional Marriage Outdated?
by Rebecca Burgoyne,
CFC Research Analyst
Like the proverbial “shot heard ‘round the world,” the decision in a California federal courtroom last week reverberated from shore to shore and throughout the global community. Judge Vaughn Walker, a single, 66-year-old man living in San Francisco denied the votes of 7 million Californians who had thoughtfully placed the time-honored definition of marriage into the state Constitution. The judge wrote that excluding homosexuals from marriage “exists as an artifact of a time when the genders were seen as having distinct roles in society and marriage. That time has passed.”
While not unexpected, the decision was predictable from a judge who from the beginning seemed intent on steamrolling proponents of Proposition 8 while giving gay marriage proponents a public stage to air their beliefs and complaints. The decision – declaring there is absolutely no difference between homosexual marriage and heterosexual marriage – was troubling for its willingness to blur the lines between accepted social science evidence and propaganda.
The outrage was immediate, as the judge’s broad approach rejected and insulted the beliefs and opinions of religious people and families – making wide-ranging pronouncements about law and social science and rubber stamping the arguments put forward by plaintiffs’ lawyers. Walker wrote, “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.” Claiming that gender no longer matters in marriage, Walker summarily dismissed time-tested substantiation that children do best with both a father and a mother, and instead painted a case for the normalization of homosexual child-rearing, behavior, and families.
While the decision is only one step on the way to the United States Supreme Court, it is taking root in the consciousness of millions of Americans – celebrated as a historical landmark by homosexual activists and identified as a potential Roe v. Wade of marriage by conservatives. If nothing else, the decision has aroused the sleeping public with a new awareness of judicial activism – at a time when Californians are already reacting to the excesses of government, and nationwide a movement has begun to reassert “the people” into a government that seems to have forgotten its power is derived from the people.
Read selected quotes from the Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision compiled by the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF).
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