Meet Pennsylvania's Village Idiot: Rep. Daryl Metcalfe

"Metcalfe Is Now The Official State Embarrassment"

from The Times Online - Beaver, Pa.:

It’s not often you see the perfect mix of stupidity and hate on display as we did Wednesday on the floor of our own esteemed state House. To nobody’s surprise, though, Cranberry Township’s village idiot, GOP state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, was proudly at the center of it.

OK. OK. That was unfair ... to village idiots.

In case you’re unaware, openly gay Democratic state Rep. Brian Sims, Philadelphia, tried Wednesday to speak on the House floor about the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings on gay marriage only to have Metcalfe and another GOPer stop him.

How? Well, apparently, there’s something called “unanimous consent” where just one legislator can withhold permission — anonymously — to let another speak. A courageous rule there.

So if it’s anonymous, how do we know about Metcalfe? Because Daryl never met a microphone, camera or notepad he didn’t like if it helps solidify his virulent right-wing street cred with the neo-con media and voters back home.

Metcalfe told WHYY-FM radio station that Sims’ comments would have been “open rebellion against God’s law.”

He then told The Associated Press that, “For me to allow him to say things that I believe are open rebellion against God are for me to participate in his open rebellion.”

So, Metcalfe has appointed himself the arbiter of not only House remarks, but God’s enforcer, too. Heavy is the empty head that wears the crown, Daryl.

Sims’ comments would have been “ultimately offensive to the majority of my constituents, and myself,” Metcalfe said. Guess what, Daryl? There’s no law against being offended.

The rest of us are all too aware of that because your warped, sick brand of theocratic bigotry and its role in our state government offends us everyday.

As More Republicans Come Out In Support of Gay Marriage, Will Venango County Remain Behind The Times?

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Becomes Third GOP Senator To Back Marriage Equality

The Washington Post - June 19, 2013:

A third Republican senator has come out in favor of gay marriage, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announcing her support Wednesday morning.

“I am a life-long Republican because I believe in promoting freedom and limiting the reach of government,” Murkowski wrote on her Web site. “When government does act, I believe it should encourage family values. I support the right of all Americans to marry the person they love and choose because I believe doing so promotes both values: it keeps politicians out of the most private and personal aspects of peoples’ lives – while also encouraging more families to form and more adults to make a lifetime commitment to one another.”

Murkowski joins Sens. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who earlier this year became the first GOP senators to back gay marriage. Murkowski is also the 54th sitting senator to endorse gay marriage. (All but three of the 54 members of the Senate Democratic caucus have also backed gay marriage.)

The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming days on cases involving legalizing same-sex marriage.

Murkowski noted that Ronald Reagan’s daughter recently said the former president would have backed gay marriage today (something another of his children has disputed).

“Like Reagan, Alaskans believe that government works best when it gets out of the way,” Murkowski said. “Countless Alaskans and Americans want to give themselves to one another and create a home together. I support marriage equality and support the government getting out of the way to let that happen.”

Earlier Wednesday morning, Murkowski broke the news in an interview with KTUU-TV.

“There may be some that when they hear the position that I hold that are deeply disappointed. There may be some who embrace the decision that I have made,” she said. “I recognize that it is an area that as a Republican I will be criticized for.”

The news was hailed by the pro-gay marriage Human Rights Campaign.

“We hope other fair-minded conservatives like Sen. Murkowski stand up and join her,” HRC President Chad Griffin said. “Alaska may be nicknamed ‘the Last Frontier,’ but we’ve got to make sure that LGBT Alaskans don’t have to wait to find justice.”

Murkowski was long seen as a likely recruit for the pro-gay marriage camp. She is among the Senate’s leading moderates and earlier this year said her views on gay marriage were “evolving.”

The GOP's Problem with Gay Rights

This segment aired on Friday night, June 14, when we were all still anticipating possible Supreme Court rulings this morning, but Rachel does a really good job illustrating the strange disconnect happening between the majority of the country and the GOP’s decision to continue pandering to its base on the issue of gay rights. She points out that, with the coming Supreme Court rulings, and with the coming vote on ENDA, this is no longer abstract, and the GOP is actually going to have to answer to the rest of the country, as opposed to just talking to their base.

Worth watching in its entirety:

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Marriage, Fairness, and the Supremes: No Going Back

by Frank Bruni - New York Times - 3/23/13:

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen advocates of gay rights — of equal rights, I should say — as revved up as they are right now, with the Supreme Court poised, on Tuesday and Wednesday, to consider same-sex marriage in two separate cases.


But while they’re watching this moment raptly and hopefully, it’s not with a sense that the fate of the cause hangs in the balance. Quite the opposite. They’re watching it with an entirely warranted confidence, verging on certainty, that no matter what the justices say during this coming week’s hearings and no matter how they rule months from now, the final chapter of this story has in fact been written. The question isn’t whether there will be a happy ending. The question is when.

That’s what’s truly remarkable about this juncture: the aura of inevitability that hovers over it. In an astonishingly brief period of time, this country has experienced a seismic shift in opinion — a profound social and political revolution — when it comes to gay and lesbian people. And it’s worth pausing, on the cusp of the court hearings, to take note of this change and to mull what’s behind it.

As for the change itself, look at the last month alone. Look merely at the Republican Party. Although its 2012 platform called for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, scores of prominent Republicans, including a few senior advisers to Mitt Romney’s campaign, broke ranks in late February and put their names to a Supreme Court amicus brief in favor of marriage equality.

That these dissidents can’t be dismissed as pure anomalies was made clear at the annual gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend. CPAC, mind you, is no enclave of moderation and reason. It’s more like an aviary for the far-right “wacko birds” whom John McCain recently called out.

But as BuzzFeed’s Chris Geidner, who covered the conference, noted, “Opponents of gay rights spoke to a nearly empty room, while supporters had a standing-room-only crowd.” That observation came under a headline that said, “At CPAC, the Marriage Fight Is Over.” The article went on to quote a bit of counsel that the Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin gave her fellow conservatives. On the issue of same-sex marriage, she told them, the country was headed in one and only one direction. Republicans could either get with the program or get comfy with their image of being woefully out of touch.

The BuzzFeed article was posted last Sunday. On Thursday, in Politico, came the sweeping declaration that March 2013 would perhaps go down as “the month when the political balance on this issue shifted unmistakably from risky to safe.” That assessment reflected formal endorsements of same-sex marriage, in less than a week’s span, by both Rob Portman and Hillary Clinton.

Clinton, tellingly, didn’t just articulate her position in the course of a broader interview or speech. She released a precisely scripted video dedicated to marriage equality, and that spotlight and care spoke volumes about the way this issue has suddenly become central to Democratic politics: something a serious national figure who wants party approval and donor dollars must support and must get right.

What a difference four years make. In 2008, both Clinton and Barack Obama publicly opposed same-sex marriage. Just a year ago, that was still Obama’s formal stance. But by the summer of 2012, marriage equality had made its way into the party platform. Now it’s woven into the party’s very fiber.

There’s no going back. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey released early last week, respondents nationwide favored marriage equality by a 58-to-36 margin. That’s an exact flip of a similar survey just seven years ago, when the margin was 36-to-58.

And among young Americans, who will obviously make up more and more of the electorate as time goes by, support was stronger still. The ABC/Washington Post survey showed that 81 percent of people in the 18-to-29 age group endorsed marriage equality.

The buildup to the Supreme Court hearings has demonstrated the breadth of diversity of support for it. There have been amicus briefs signed, or proclamations of solidarity issued, by dozens of professional athletes and by the American Academy of Pediatrics, by tech giants and accounting firms and retailers and airlines. Somewhere along the way, standing up for gay marriage went from nervy to trendy. It’s the Harlem Shake of political engagement.

And the unstoppable advances made by gays and lesbians were suggested by a quiet but revealing statement recently by the president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, who signaled that the organization would put a new emphasis on transgender equality.

THESE advances happened in largest part because of the increased visibility of gay people who have had the courage and optimism to share their lives and truths with family, friends, colleagues. Although many critics nitpicked Portman for changing his views only out of what was deemed a selfish concern for his own gay son, that’s precisely the way many people are illuminated and tugged along: by emotion, not abstraction; by what’s immediate and personal, not what’s foreign and theoretical. Clinton has acknowledged as much by citing the influence of gays and lesbians she has known and respected. And the decades-long rallying cry of the gay-rights movement — come out, come out, so that Americans understand the impact of discrimination on people they care about — was predicated on that wrinkle of human nature.

Additionally, the quest for same-sex marriage has forced many Americans to view gays and lesbians in a fresh light. We’re no longer so easily stereotyped and dismissed as rebels atop parade floats, demanding permission to behave outside society’s norms. We’re aspirants to tradition, communicating shared values and asserting a fundamentally conservative desire, at least among many of us, for families, stability, commitment. What’s so threatening about any of that?

And who really loses if we win? Where’s the injured party? The abortion debate grinds on in part because to those who believe that life begins at conception and warrants full protection from then on, every pro-choice victory claims victims. The gun debate grinds on because new restrictions are just that — restrictions — and no matter how justifiable and necessary they may be, opponents will rail that their freedom is being curtailed.

But the legalization of same-sex marriage takes nothing from anyone, other than the illusion, which is all it is and ever was, that healthy, nurturing relationships are reserved for people of opposite sexes.

The Supreme Court cases and their resolutions indeed matter. If the court doesn’t dismantle the Defense of Marriage Act, there’s no telling how many more years will pass before this repugnant 1996 law tumbles in some other way and before gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such weddings are treated equally under federal law.

And the court could, in its ruling on the constitutionality of a California ban against same-sex marriage, hasten the spread of marriage equality beyond those nine states and the District of Columbia. For now the count builds slowly, through time-consuming, patience-fraying, expensive legislative and referendum battles, and a matter of basic fairness is beholden to local politics and pockets of enduring bigotry.

But fairness is where we’re heading, at least in regard to marriage, which has emerged as the terrain on which Americans are hashing out their feelings about gays and lesbians. The trajectory is undeniable. The trend line is clear. And the choice before the justices is whether to be handmaidens to history, or whether to sit it out.

Family Values that Diane Gramley, and Other Right Wing Bigots, Could Never Understand

Dear Justice Roberts,

My name is Daniel Martinez-Leffew. I'm 12 years old and I live in northern California. I have a younger sister named Salina, and we were adopted by two dads.

We were adopted when I was five and my sister was about twelve months old.

When I was in foster care I was told that I was considered unadoptable because of my Goldenhar syndrome. That is a genetic disorder that affects the whole left side of my body.

I lost my little brother Emilio because some people wanted to adopt him, but they weren't willing to adopt me because of my medical conditions.

Lucky for me, that's when my two dads came along.

I recently found out that you yourself adopted two kids, a boy and a girl, kind of like me and my sister.

Family means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but some people believe that you have to have the same blood to be a family.

You and I both know that family goes deeper than blood.

I was lucky to be adopted by two guys I can both call dad. They give me and my sister so much love. My dad Jay works in San Francisco as a deputy sheriff, and my dad Bryan stays at home and takes care of me and my sister.

My dads really encourage me to excel in life. Since I want to be a cook when I grow up, they're letting me take cooking classes. My parents want me to improve, whether it's schoolwork, or my social life.

I know you have a tough decision to make with the gay marriage issue, but my family is just as valuable and worthwhile as any other.

It's especially tough for you because I know you don't necessarily believe in gay marriage religiously.

Lucky for us, though, you also don't believe in taking away a right, even from people like us.

My family and I have spent the last four years making YouTube videos to show people who don't understand that our family is like any other. If Prop 8 is allowed to stand, imagine the pain we would feel knowing that we are not considered equal to everyone else.

I guess to end this, it is important that all families are protected and valued. In our country we may not all be the same, but we are all Americans and deserve an equal chance at bettering our lives.

I hope you make the right decision in the end.

Sincerely,

Daniel

Is George Will Homophobic?

His Rejection Of The Social Science On Gay Marriage 

Is Incoherent, Embarrassing, And Anti-Gay

by Nathaniel Frank for Slate:

In a conservative movement seized by extremists, George Will is one of the sane ones. But his recent rejection of social science as having any role to play in the gay marriage debate is wildly off the mark. It’s intellectually dishonest, scientifically ignorant, and—I’ll say it—anti-gay.


 Will claims that reasonable people disagree about gay marriage “because so little is known about its consequences.” He quotes a legal brief by conservative scholars affiliated with a famously anti-gay think tank that calls research about gay marriage and parenting “radically inconclusive.” He then warns the Supreme Court—which will hear oral arguments on two gay marriage cases next week—to be wary “about social science that purports to prove propositions … for which there cannot yet be decisive evidence.” In other words, he suggests the value of research on gay marriage is currently zero.

Suppose a group of people claim that redheads can’t enter the town square because they’ll drive away commerce, badly harming the economy—and then this group gets a law passed barring redheads from public spaces. To reverse the discriminatory law, they then argue, redheads must spend however long it takes to amass definitive proof that entering the town square won’t cause harm (which is impossible since you can’t conduct research on scenarios you won’t permit). When redheads nevertheless begin to produce a growing body of research that points conclusively to the fact that their presence does not harm commerce, the law’s defenders consistently reply, “It still might; more research is needed.”

That is the position Will is defending in the gay marriage debate. The very idea that gay equality would cause serious harm is the kind of belief you hold if you’re already inclined to think, usually for moral reasons, that homosexuality is harmful, that is, if you’re anti-gay. Otherwise, there’d be no better reason to assume gay marriage is harmful than there is from letting redheads go to market.

Although the real basis of most opposition to same-sex marriage is moral, conservatives have found that arguments alleging harm to society are more powerful than ones that simply declare what they don’t like to be morally wrong. So they have spent a generation making the case that gay equality would cause all kinds of social disruptions. It’s exactly the same tactic that was recently proven profoundly wrong when the Pentagon lifted its ban on openly gay service despite continuous claims that doing so could destroy the military.

Advocates of equality have responded by conducting research on gay families that has consistently shown such fears to be ungrounded. George Will calls this body of work “spurious social science by supporters of same-sex marriage” and complains that it “purports to prove” something that can’t yet be proven. But serious scholars don’t claim that social science proves gay marriage is OK. It’s the other way around: Anti-gay activists dream up harms that gay equality would cause and claim social science proves it—even though they’ve never supplied such proof. What the most responsible advocates of gay equality claim is that social science helps dismantle conservative claims of harm and strongly suggests the kids are OK. We use the research defensively, out of necessity, because anti-gay advocates make baseless empirical predictions that we’re obligated to refute.

Will also gets the scientific method wrong, offering an impossibly high—and wholly incorrect—bar for what constitutes scientific proof, leaving no way for the pro-gay side to ever convince him that the bogus harms conservatives have dreamed up are unlikely to happen. He suggests that the “scientific standard” requires “large random samples with appropriate control samples” and concludes, quoting the conservative legal brief, that “there neither are nor could possibly be any scientifically valid studies from which to predict the effects of a family structure that is so new and so rare.”

But research doesn’t have to use random samples to be scientific. The scientific method demands systematic analysis based on empirical observation. While large random samples are the gold standard, that doesn’t mean that all other research is unscientific. It just lessens—somewhat—its predictive value. And bear in mind that even the largest research studies on public policy issues only offer predictions, not guarantees, about future outcomes. The difference here is one of degree.

What does the social science actually tell us? Statistics on marriage rates show consistently that they have not dropped in states and countries that allow gay marriage, as examined in Slate. But since gay marriage is so new, so are these results, and no one ever promised civilization would end in a day.

The bulk of the controversy surrounds research on gay parenting. At least 45 scholarly studies have compared children of gay and straight parents and found no disadvantages to the former. It’s true that many have small, nonrandom sample sizes—often about 30-50 families. But when you aggregate 45 consecutive studies—even small ones—that all reach the same conclusion, what you end up with is an almost unheard-of scholarly consensus. “Rarely is there as much consensus in any area of social science as in the case of gay parenting,” said Judith Stacey, the New York University sociologist who is one of the deans of gay parenting scholarship.

In any event, not all the studies are small or nonrandom. A 2010 Stanford study used census data, instead of a convenience sampling or self-reporting, to examine 3,500 children of same-sex couples. It compared their school progress to more than 600,000 kids of straight parents and found no differences. Other studies are “longitudinal,” increasing statistical reliability by tracking developments over many years. The longest-running and largest such study, the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study, followed 78 lesbian-headed households for more than 25 years. Led by Nanette Gartrell, a UCLA-based psychiatrist and researcher, the study found no disadvantages (and a few advantages) to children with lesbian moms.

Is there any research showing disadvantages for kids with gay parents? Try as they might, conservative scholars, often funded by anti-gay think tanks, have failed to produce a single study. In the most embarrassing recent effort, University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus was formally reprimanded for publishing a study (which he wrote about for Slate) that he claimed had a massive sampling pool; in reality the number of children of same-sex couples he surveyed was a whopping two. (Last week it was reported that conservative funders bankrolled the study and urged Regnerus to rush it to maximize its influence on the Supreme Court.) Whatever you may say about the limits of the gay parenting studies—and all research has limits—the pro-gay research is currently winning, 45-0.

Absent actual evidence, the religious right has routinely used studies of single-parent and divorced households to allege that any family lacking a father—that is, even if it has two loving moms—is bad for kids. They cite research showing that two parents are better than one, and since all that research has focused on opposite-sex parents, they conflate number with gender and rally around the talking point that kids need “a mother and a father.” Appallingly, George Will has now stooped to this level, citing the allegation of conservative scholars that “research concluded that growing up without fathers had significant negative effects on boys,” even though that research never included households with two gay parents—and this after complaining about “inappropriate invocations of spurious social science” by liberals.

None of this should matter. Even if gay parenting did disadvantage kids, it wouldn’t follow that gay marriage should be banned since gay people—like single and divorced people—will have kids no matter what. How could banning gay marriage help those—or any—kids? And if we based straight marriage rights on predicting durability, half the country wouldn’t be allowed to wed.

But the research does matter, because conservatives have made it matter, and it may very well influence the Supreme Court. It’s true we don’t know everything about gay marriage and parenting, but what we do know is important to get right.

Obama Urges Supreme Court To Overturn California Same-Sex Marriage Ban

By Robert Barnes for the Washington Post - February 28


The Obama administration told the Supreme Court on Thursday that California’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, a position that could also cast doubt on prohibitions in other states.

The administration did not endorse a constitutional right to marry that would apply nationwide. But its friend-of-the-court brief, a bold declaration of the administration’s interest in gay rights, said the court should review laws banning same-sex marriage under “heightened scrutiny.”

The administration’s entry for the first time into the legal battle over Proposition 8 — a voter initiative that amended the California Constitution in 2008 to limit marriage to a man and a woman — also carried great symbolic value for those advancing the cause of marriage equality.

The Obama administration did not have to file a brief in the California case but said the question of how the court reviews laws that “target gay and lesbian people for discriminatory treatment” is of great interest to the government.

In California’s case, Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. wrote, the state offers same-sex couples domestic partnerships but withholds marriage.

“California’s extension of all of the substantive rights and responsibilities of marriage to gay and lesbian domestic partners particularly undermines the justifications for Proposition 8,” the brief says. “It indicates that Proposition 8’s withholding of the designation of marriage is not based on an interest in promoting responsible procreation and child-rearing — petitioners’ central claimed justification for the initiative — but instead on impermissible prejudice.”

The government’s brief noted that seven other states have similar domestic-partnership laws: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island. But it did not call for the court to overturn those laws.

In some ways, the brief marks a compromise between threatening the prohibitions on same-sex marriage that the vast majority of states have enacted and nudging along the number of states that allow such unions.

The administration has been under pressure from gay rights groups and others to enter the Proposition 8 case, especially after President Obama’s inaugural address, in which he said, “If we are truly created equal, than surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, called the brief “a powerful statement that Proposition 8 cannot be squared with the principles of equality upon which this nation was founded.”

“It is an unprecedented call to action by our government that it is time to recognize gay and lesbian Americans as full and equal citizens under the law,” he said.

Thomas Peters, communications director of the National Organization for Marriage and a supporter of Proposition 8, said his group “expects the Supreme Court to exonerate the votes of over 7 million Californians to protect marriage.”

“The President is clearly fulfilling a campaign promise to wealthy gay marriage donors,” Peters said in a statement. “There is no right to redefine marriage in our Constitution.”

The Supreme Court at the end of the month will consider two cases concerning same-sex marriage.

One addresses the Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in those states where such unions are legal. The administration for two years has said that is unconstitutional, and a string of lower-court decisions have agreed.

The other is Proposition 8, which was passed by voters after the California Supreme Court recognized a right for same-sex unions under the state constitution. More than 18,000 couples were wed in the meantime.

A federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down the amendment.

While the DOMA case concerns couples who are already married, the Proposition 8 case offers the Supreme Court a chance to examine whether there is a constitutional right to marriage that cannot be denied by the states. But, as the administration’s brief indicated, there are more limited ways the court could rule.

Currently, the District, Maryland and eight other states allow same-sex marriages, while nearly all the rest forbid it.

Obama’s position on same-sex marriage is an evolving one, he has said. Although he opposed Proposition 8, he has never said he thought that the same-sex marriage issue should be decided nationally.

“I continue to believe,” he told ABC News last year when announcing his support of same-sex unions, “that this is an issue that is going to be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as a marriage.”

Those who are defending Proposition 8 say the state’s acceptance of domestic partnerships proves that voters were motivated by a desire to protect traditional marriage, not to discriminate against homosexuals.

But the administration said that domestic partnerships prove just the opposite. California has “recognized that same-sex couples form deeply committed relationships that bear the hallmarks of their neighbors’ opposite-sex marriages; they establish homes and lives together, support each other financially, share the joys and burdens of raising children, and provide care through illness and comfort at the moment of death,” the brief stated.

It said a reluctance to change the “traditional” definition of marriage is not a defense.

“Marriage has changed in certain significant ways over time — such as the demise of coverture and the elimination of racial restrictions on marital partners — that could have been characterized as traditional or fundamental to the institution,” Verrilli wrote.

A purported interest in responsible procreation and child-rearing cannot justify Proposition 8, the brief stated, because California confers “full rights of parenting and child-rearing on same-sex couples.”

And the administration said the court should not agree with an argument that it must respect “the will of the people” to amend the state’s constitution and to overturn the California Supreme Court’s decision allowing same-sex marriage.

“Promoting democratic self-
governance and accountability is a laudable governmental interest, but it is not one that justify a law that would otherwise violate the constitution,” Verrilli wrote.

In such cases, he said, the judiciary plays a special role in protecting minorities.

The administration’s brief is added to dozens that outside groups have filed in the same-sex marriage cases. Briefs have been submitted by states that allow such unions and those that forbid them; religious groups on both sides of the issue; Republicans who support same-sex marriage and conservatives who say it undermines a traditional way of life.

Labor unions and hundreds of major corporations weighed in on the side of same-sex marriage, for instance.

The AFL-CIO said its gay workers are economically harmed by laws that do not allow them to marry.

“These economic injuries are readily quantifiable in terms of the dollars gay and lesbian workers are forced to spend on higher costs and taxes, in the denials of access to publicly and privately provided benefits, and in the refusals of entry into and in the deportations out of the U.S.,” the union brief said. “These harms further extend into the physical workplace, where gay and lesbian workers often confront and navigate biases about their sexual orientation and the comparative worth of their personal relationships.”

The businesses, which included such giants as Microsoft and Nike and small businesses such as a winery in California, said restrictions against same-sex marriage create extra work for them — over insurance coverage and taxes, for instance — and force them to categorize workers differently.

“It puts us, as employers, to unnecessary cost and administrative complexity, and regardless of our business or professional judgment forces us to treat one class of our lawfully married employees differently than another, when our success depends upon the welfare and morale of all employees,” the brief stated.

Another is signed by more than 100 prominent Republicans, including Clint Eastwood and seven former governors, among them 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman (although only a small number currently hold public office).

They tell the court that supporting civil marriage for same-sex couples is consistent with a “commitment to limited government and individual freedom.”

“Many of the signatories to this brief previously did not support civil marriage for same-sex couples,” the brief stated. But after states offered such unions, they said, they have “reexamined the evidence and their own positions and have concluded that there is no legitimate, fact-based reason for denying same-sex couples the same recognition in law that is available to opposite-sex couples.”

On the other side, a coalition of African American pastors told the court it should not draw comparisons to its 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down state bans on interracial marriage.

“The ruling in Loving was not revolutionary the way striking down the traditional male-female definition would be in the present case,” the brief stated. “The anti-miscegenation statutes in Virginia were at war with the core purposes of marriage — especially the fostering of responsible procreation and child rearing by biological parents.”

And 19 states, including Virginia, urged the court to overturn the 9th Circuit’s opinion, which it said overrode the will of California voters.

“The result is not merely vitiation of California’s co-equal sovereignty without a clear constitutional warrant,” the brief said. “It is disintegration of perhaps the most fundamental and revered cultural institution of American life: marriage as we know it.”

Obama’s Shifts Affect U.S. Legal Plan on Gay Marriage

by Adam Liptak for the New York Times 2/4/13:

WASHINGTON — The practice of law would be much more pleasant, many lawyers will tell you over a second Scotch, if it did not require clients. It is one thing to construct an airtight legal argument and quite another to deal with the demands of inconstant human beings.

Consider Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr.’s most prominent client, President Obama. In May, in announcing his support for same-sex marriage, Mr. Obama said the issue should be decided state by state. In his Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Obama seemed to make a case for a more national approach.

The timing was awkward. Mr. Verrilli is in the midst of considering what to tell the Supreme Court in a pair of momentous same-sex marriage cases to be argued in March. Just days before the inauguration, he met with lawyers challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage, who urged him to weigh in on their side. He was noncommittal, but his client’s public marching orders until then had suggested that he should sit that one out.

Here is what Mr. Obama told Robin Roberts of ABC News in May: “What you’re seeing is, I think, states working through this issue in fits and starts, all across the country. Different communities are arriving at different conclusions, at different times. And I think that’s a healthy process and a healthy debate. And I continue to believe that this is an issue that is going be worked out at the local level, because historically, this has not been a federal issue, what’s recognized as a marriage.”

That reasoning fits tolerably well with the Justice Department’s position in one of the two cases before the Supreme Court, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307. That case is a challenge to the constitutionality of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 law that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman in connection with federal benefits. The Defense of Marriage Act, Mr. Obama explained in May, “tried to federalize what has historically been state law.”

Mr. Verrilli will presumably make much the same point on March 27, when the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Windsor case.

But there is a second case, and there Mr. Verrilli faces tough choices. On March 26, the day before the argument about the 1996 law, the justices will hear Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144. It seeks to overturn Proposition 8, a voter initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.

If marriage is a matter for the states, as Mr. Obama announced in May, you might think that California should be permitted to prohibit same-sex marriage.

The federal government is not a party to the California case, and it is not required to file a brief or to take a public position. Ms. Roberts asked Mr. Obama a direct question in May about whether he had given his lawyers instructions about what to do: “Can you ask your Justice Department to join in the litigation in fighting states that are banning same-sex marriage?”

Mr. Obama changed the subject.

All of this might have allowed Mr. Verrilli to concentrate on the case concerning the federal law and stay quiet in the California case. There is a precedent for this: the federal government took no position in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, the case in which the Supreme Court struck down bans on interracial marriage. Nor did it weigh in on the last major gay rights case, Lawrence v. Texas, which in 2003 struck down state laws making gay sex a crime.

The solicitor general in 2003 was Theodore B. Olson. He is now in private practice and is one of the lawyers challenging the California ban on same-sex marriage. On Jan. 18, he and his colleague David Boies, along with lawyers from the San Francisco city attorney’s office, met with Mr. Verrilli to urge him to take a stand in the California case. Defenders of Proposition 8 made the opposite pitch a few days later.

Mr. Verrilli was noncommittal, but there is now reason to think that Mr. Olson will prevail in persuading Mr. Verrilli to ignore the precedent Mr. Olson had set. That is largely because Mr. Obama’s thinking on same-sex marriage continues to evolve.

In his Inaugural Address last month, Mr. Obama was no longer talking about leaving the issue to the states.

“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law,” he said, “for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal, as well.”

Mr. Verrilli has until the end of the month to file a brief in the California case. Paul D. Clement, a former solicitor general who represents House Republicans defending the 1996 federal law, said he detected some paradoxes in Mr. Verrilli’s predicament.

“It will be interesting in the end,” Mr. Clement said dryly at a Georgetown University Law Center forum last week, “if the litigation position of the Justice Department and the president’s position kind of realign.”

Mr. Clement said the solicitor general’s position always had weight at the Supreme Court. But he added that it may be less consequential in the California case than in some earlier ones, given the administration’s general, if nuanced, support for gay rights.

Thomas C. Goldstein, the publisher of Scotusblog and a lawyer who argues frequently before the Supreme Court, said the justices were not the only relevant audience for a brief from the Obama administration’s top appellate lawyer.

“Part of what is going on in the Inaugural Address and part of what would happen in a brief like that is a statement of what’s morally right and wrong,” he said. “It could matter to Americans much more than it matters to the Supreme Court.”

The Wedge Has Lost Its Edge, Except For Hate Groups Like The American Family Association Of Pennsylvania

Supreme Court and Prop 8 - A Longer Walk Down the Aisle

by Hank Plante for SFGate:

In the words of those other Supremes, You Can't Hurry Love.

After months of waiting, Friday's news that the U.S. Supreme Court will finally hear California's Proposition 8 case as well as the validity of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, means all this has dragged on longer than a Kardashian's wedding.

It was already bad enough for anxious Californians, as tens of thousands of gays and lesbians in this state were left at the altar on election night, when voters in four other states delivered what gay writer Andrew Sullivan called, "The biggest night for gay rights in electoral history."

But here in the state known as a trend-setter, we've been dealt a different hand: a four-year engagement in the courts that ultimately led to the U.S. Supreme Court now hearing the cases.

Californians watched from the sidelines as gay and lesbian marriages were approved for the first time by voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine (and an attempt to write a same-sex marriage ban into Minnesota's constitution failed). The November election results meant that 15 percent of Americans now live in states where same-sex marriage is legal. California same-sex marriages would double that figure if they're allowed to happen.

In addition to the Prop. 8 case, the Supreme Court will also act on DOMA, which denies federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Like Prop. 8, DOMA was ruled unconstitutional by federal appeals courts.

Much has been written about how DOMA denies more than 1,100 federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples, including the ability of one partner to inherit another's Social Security benefits.

But for a real-time glimpse of DOMA's impact, look at last month's news from Seattle. There, the Boeing Co. is saying it is undecided about awarding pensions to surviving gay spouses, despite the fact that Washington State voters just passed same-sex marriage.

It seems that pensions are covered under federal law, which trumps state law, and under DOMA there is no recognition of same-sex marriage. Boeing's spokesman told the Seattle Times, "This is obviously a new law and we'll take a closer look to see how it impacts us across the board."

But union negotiators at Boeing say the company has "no intention of providing such coverage."

Meanwhile, while all this excitement about same-sex marriage is thanks to the Supreme Court, it stands in stark contrast to how quiet the subject has been during the presidential election. Once President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage, it never seemed to dominate the campaigns. And there's a reason for that.

An important study from the Pew Research Center this year found same-sex marriage last on a list of voters' concerns. In fact, it was number 18 on that list, following issues like the economy, health care and terrorism. Gay marriage has lost its punch as a political issue, even for Republicans.

As Evan Wolfson of the group Freedom to Marry says, "The wedge has lost its edge."

Even young evangelicals are more accepting of gay peers than their elders. A 2011 poll by the Public Religion Research Institute found nearly half of young evangelicals favor allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry.

None of this is any surprise to political analysts like Dan Schnur, former communications director for both McCain and California Gov. Pete Wilson. Schnur, who is now director of the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, says: "The age demographics on the same-sex marriage issue are almost unique in public opinion annals. I've never seen a generational trend so pronounced. Call it the 'Glee-ification' of America, but younger voters in both parties have been trending much more strongly in support of same-sex marriage than their older counterparts."

And the numbers bear that out.

A Field Poll released this year found 59 percent of California voters now support same-sex marriage, which is an exact reversal of the 59 percent who opposed it back in 1977, the first year Field polled on the subject.

Can we draw any clues from history on what the Supreme Court will do?

For an answer, look no farther than the U.S. Supreme Court's own history on gay rights: The court upheld Georgia's anti-sodomy law in the 1986 Bowers vs. Hardwick case. But then, in 2003, the court reversed itself and struck down a similar Texas sodomy law in the Lawrence vs. Texas case. With that, the court essentially decriminalized homosexuality in the United States.

No one exemplifies the evolution in thinking on gay rights more than Sen. Dianne Feinstein. When she was mayor of San Francisco in 1982, she vetoed a domestic partnership bill that the Board of Supervisors had passed. A popular joke in the gay community back then was, "Dianne must think 'domestic partners' is a housecleaning service."

Feinstein drew criticism from gays and lesbians again on the day after the 2004 presidential election, when John Kerry lost to George W. Bush. Standing on the front lawn of her Presidio Terrace home, Feinstein was asked by a reporter if San Francisco's premature issuance of same-sex marriage licenses hurt Democrats.

Her now famous reply: "I think the whole issue has been too much, too fast, too soon."

But fast-forward to 2012, and it was Feinstein who was the most prominent politician to speak out against Prop. 8, and who has been leading the charge in the U.S. Senate to repeal DOMA.

Prop. 8's passage is how it all wound up in the courts.

After the botched "No on 8" campaign, the backlash against its LGBT leaders was so strong that when Hollywood's Rob Reiner enlisted heavyweight lawyers David Boies and Ted Olson to take Prop. 8 to court, they refused to allow the gay groups from joining their case. All sides now say they have patched up their differences, but it remains ironic that some of the strongest voices for gay rights in California's court case have been three straight men: Reiner, and the two lawyers he raised money to hire: the odd couple of Boies and Olson. Boise is an old-fashioned liberal, and Olson is an old-fashioned conservative, from back in the days when conservatives believed the government should stay out of your bedroom.

The bottom line now is we will know something definitive from the highest court in the land, even if it means waiting a little longer. As Jon Davidson, from the pro-gay Lambda Legal Defense Fund puts it, "The tide is not turning; it's turned."


Hank Plante is an Emmy and Peabody-winning reporter who covered the Prop. 8 election and trial for CBS 5 TV News in San Francisco.