MARRIAGE IS WORTH PROTECTING

The New York Times recently reported on a comment made in 2006 by Tiger Woods' father in which he claimed to have advised Tiger that marriage is unnecessary. I'm not sure Tiger agrees with that statement, but we now know he's been living as if it doesn't mean much. 

Considering the ease with which marriages can be dissolved, one could be forgiven for thinking that marriage is not that important anymore.  But marriage is important enough in America to have forced a pitched battle over its legal definition.  In state after state, citizens have voted to protect marriage and against opening it to same sex couples. In a few places, courts and legislatures have upset the traditional definition of marriage. Nowhere has this bucking of the democratic process been more blatant than in California, where the people have voted, twice, that marriage remains the union between one man and one woman, and where that definition is being challenged this month in federal court.  Two prominent attorneys, Ted Olsen and David Boies who faced each other in the Supreme Court  case, Bush vs. Gore are fighting together to overturn California's Proposition 8 in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger.  

When the court challenge was announced, nine gay advocacy groups, including Lambda Legal, the Human Rights Campaign, and the ACLU, wrote a memo of protest. The consequences of  losing, perhaps at the Supreme Court could be disasterousm for the gay righrts movement. The precedent and the backlash could set back the quest for gay marriage and other items on the homosexual agenda perhaps indefinitely.

Boies and Olsen will argue that homosexuals are a "suspect class," a group that --like racial minorities, religious groups, and foreign-born citizens--qualify for special protection. The argument is:  laws that target such groups are "suspect" and must serve a compelling state interest, such as national security.  The counter-argument will hold that there are such  compelling interests:  family stability, responsible behavior in natural procreative relationships, and strong bonds between children and their biological parents. That's why the judge in this case has asked the parties to address such issues as whether homosexuals make suitable parents, or whether homosexuals can change their orientation.

 Boies and Olsen need to prove that gays deserve the same rights as heterosexuals because they are....different.  If they fail to establish this suspect classification for homosexuals, they will, instead, need to show that support for laws defining marriage as it's been defined for millennia, is motivated solely by ill will towards gays.  Boies and Olsen plan to attempt to show that Proposition 8 was motivated by prejudice rather than by the protection of marriage for its own sake. They persuaded the judge to permitted them to subpoena internal emails and strategy documents from the "Yes on 8" campaign  hoping to prove such animus.

The lead defense counsel is Charles Cooper, former Assistant Attorney General under Ronald Reagan assisted by top attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund.  The judge's name  is Vaughn Walker. They need our prayers.