As Joe Carter says at First Things, “Disappointing, though not really surprising” decision by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker in overturning Proposition 8, the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex ‘marriage’ — a law that was supported by a majority of state voters in a 2008 ballot initiative. Read Judge Walker’s decision and you’ll see that he is just making up reasons for over-ruling the voters of California; Daniel Foster at NRO has key excerpts. But that isn’t surprising because as Gerald V. Bradley, a law professor at Notre Dame, noted at Fox News, Judge Walker is hardly an unbiased judge. The decision will be appealed to the extremely left-wing 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and eventually the Supreme Court of the United States. If this ruling is allowed to stand, it will become, as the Family Research Council says, the Roe v. Wade of same-sex marriage. CitizenLink Judicial Analyst Bruce Hausknecht insists the battle will go on (surely it will) but these two ‘graphs from her post capture how offensive the decision is on so many levels (morally, democratically):
Judge Walker’s ruling raises a shocking notion that a single federal judge can nullify the votes of more than 7 million California voters, binding Supreme Court precedent, and several millennia-worth of evidence that children need both a mom and a dad.
During these legal proceedings, the millions of California residents who supported Prop 8 have been wrongfully accused of being bigots and haters. Nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, they are concerned citizens, moms and dads who simply wanted to restore to California the long-standing understanding that marriage is between one woman and one man – a common-sense position that was taken away by the actions of another out-of-control state court in May 2008.
Politically, Judge Walker’s intervention guarantees an escalation of the culture wars and that probably helps the Republican Party. But I’d rather have the policy victory on an issue this important than the political benefits of the fallout of a terrible instance of judicial activism.
