Box Turtle Bulletin

Marriage Opponents Lose Pursuit Of Special Rights

It’s been a bad week for the National Organization for Marriage. Two separate courts this week ruled against NOM’s attempt to enshrine a special right to flout laws intended to lend transparency to the electoral process. The first loss came on Monday when Federal Judge Benjamin Settle ruled in Doe v Reed (PDF: 112KB/34 pages) that the state of Washington must disclose the names of citizens who signed the petition putting Referendum 71 on the ballot. Protect Marriage Washington, a NOM affiliate, sued to block the release in a bid to stake a special exemption to Washington’s campaign disclosure laws, claiming that signatories would be subject to threats and harassments. Judge Settle rejected that claim:

While Plaintiffs have not shown serious and widespread threats, harassment, or reprisals against the signers of R-71, or even that such activity would be reasonably likely to occur upon the publication of their names and contact information, they have developed substantial evidence that the public advocacy of traditional marriage as the exclusive definition of marriage, or the expansion of rights for same sex partners, has engendered hostility in this state, and risen to violence elsewhere, against some who have engaged in that advocacy. This should concern every citizen and deserves the full attention of law enforcement when the line gets crossed and an advocate becomes the victim of a crime or is subject to a genuine threat of violence. The right of individuals to speak openly and associate with others who share common views without justified fear of harm is at the very foundation of preserving a free and open society.

The facts before the Court in this case, however, do not rise to the level of demonstrating that a reasonable probability of threats, harassment, or reprisals exists as to the signers of R-71, now nearly two years after R-71 was submitted to the voters in Washington State.

That was on Monday. To bookend the week perfectly, Federal Judge Morrison England, Jr., today issued a bench ruling denying ProtectMarriage.com and NOM’s quest for a special right to withhold the release of campaign finance records related to the passage of Propositon 8 three years ago. Judge England said that the groups failed to prove that they should be exempt from campaign finance laws which are designed to protect the public during expensive initiative campaigns.

Judge England is expected to issue a written ruling later.

Gays Are Evil

So says National Organization for Marriage’s new honcho John Eastman:

Those fighting for traditional marriage can feel beaten down by the culture at large. Do you feel that victory for traditional marriage is possible?

Evil will be with us always, and it requires constant vigilance to defeat. I look at it as a litigator and an educator. There will always be threats to institutions grounded in human nature by those who think human nature doesn’t define limits. We need to be involved in the immediate defense of threats against marriage, but also take a long-range view by educating the next generation about the importance of the issues we’re confronting.

And so does Focus On the Family’s Glenn Stanton:

All sexual sin is wrong because it fails to mirror the Trinitarian image, but homosexuality does more than fail. It’s a particularly evil lie of Satan because he knows that it overthrows the very image of the Trinitarian God in creation, revealed in the union of male and female.

And yet Focus On the Family’s Tim Daly complained to CNN that it’s unfair to say Focus hates gay people:

But do we, as Webster’s defines “hate,” feel “intense hostility and aversion” to gays and lesbians? Do we regard them with “extreme dislike or antipathy”? Unequivocally not.

Uh huh.

[via Good As You]

Not so skurrred

Once it became evident that Perry v. Schwarzenegger – the Proposition 8 trial – would be followed closely by the public and once it was abundantly clear that those supporting Proposition 8 had nothing to offer in its defense but speculation, tradition, and animus, the Proponents knew they had to do something. So they insisted that the case not be shown to the citizens, going so far as the Supreme Court.

But you can’t tell the court (or the public) that your witnesses aren’t going to witness because they will look like fools, so the Proponents came up with a unique explanation. Gays are violent threatening people and the witnesses are terrified of repercussions. (Washington Times)

“Brian Brown, executive director of the National Organization for Marriage, which campaigned for Proposition 8 but isn’t a party to the case, said he is worried about the safety of witnesses, who could include contributors, campaign staff and volunteers.

‘The question is really whether Judge Walker can put people on the stand where they can be threatened,’ said Mr. Brown. ‘It’s a question of people’s safety.’

But Brian Brown and his integrity parted ways long ago. In reality, none of the witnesses – indeed, no anti-gay activists – fear gay people. Our community is one which has been welcoming and a safe place for pretty much anyone.

Surely there is no person in this country more singularly associated with the campaign to deny gay people their civil marriage rights than Maggie Gallagher… the same Maggie Gallagher who went alone to a theatrical production this week where she knew that the overwhelming majority of people around her would be gay.
Because she knew she’d be safe.

Confirmed: Maggie Gallagher Steps Down As NOM Board Chair

Following an earlier Tweet from an AP reporter, the National Organization for Marriage has now confirmed that Maggie Gallagher is stepping down as board chair, and that John Eastman has been tapped for the position. According to NOM’s press release:

Dr. John Eastman is the former Dean of Chapman University Law School in California and is the Founding Director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, a public interest law firm associated with the Claremont Institute. He has participated in over 50 cases in our nation’s highest courts, including such landmark cases as the Pledge of Allegiance case, the Boy Scouts of America case, the Ohio school vouchers case, the Kelo case involving property takings, and the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act case. Dr. Eastman is a former clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He received his J.D. from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in government and political philosophy from Claremont Graduate School.

…John Eastman stated, “Marriage has quite correctly been described as a bedrock of civilization. Protecting the institution of marriage is a critically important issue, and I’m honored to join such distinguished company on the Board of such a phenomenally effective organization as the National Organization for Marriage.”

The press release also quotes Gallagher:

“I will remain on the NOM board, and continue to work on specific projects for NOM, as well as taking on some additional outside projects I’ve long deferred, such as finishing my book Debating Same-Sex Marriage¸ which I’ve been working on for Oxford University Press with Prof. John Corvino,” Gallagher added.

Maggie Gallagher Out at NOM?

That’s what AP reporter David Crary tweeted:

John Eastman’s bio at Chapman University is here. He’s an attorney and founding director of the conservative Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, which is affiliated with the Claremont Institute, dedicated to “restor[ing] the principles of the American founding fathers to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. Eastman is also a former law clerk for US Supreme Court Justice Clarance Thomas. We’ll have more as this develops.

Perry Signs NOM’s Anti-Gay Pledge

Pledges allegiance to Maggie Gallagher.

Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry joins Sen. Rick Santorum, Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in signing the National Organizations for Marriage’s anti-gay pledge. The pledge requires candidates to:

• Support the Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman,
• Defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court,
• Apply a marriage litmus test for judges and the attorney general,
• Appoint a presidential commission to investigate so-called “harassment” of traditional marriage supporters,
• Demand that marriage be put to a vote in the District of Columbia.

NOM Loses Another Attempt To Flout Campaign Laws

The National Organization for Marriage lost two more court cases yesterday when the First Circuit Court of Appeals rejected their bid to avoid complying with Rhode Island’s and Maine’s campaign disclosure laws. NOM had asked a federal district judge to exempt them from Rhode Island’s requirement that they disclose money they spent to support various candidates. This case involves NOM’s support for political candidates. A separate case in Maine concerning NOM’s support for a ballot question that overturned Maine’s marriage equality law in 2009 is still pending before the First Circuit Court. A lower court had upheld Maine’s financial disclosure laws concerning ballot measures.

Pawlenty, Santorum join FRC’s and NOM’s Iowa Bus Tour

The “Values Voters Bus Tour,” sponsored by the Family “Research” Council’s lobbying arm, the National Organization for Marriage, and the Susan B. Anthony List, kicked off yesterday in Des Moines, Iowa, with the goal of hitting several Iowa communities ahead of Saturday’s GOP presidential Straw Poll. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty was on hand for the tour’s start, which was greeted by a sparse crowd that appears to have been outnumbered by reporters:

The bus made five more stops before the day was done yesterday. This morning, the bus tour resumed with a breakfast in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum met the bus.

Pawlenty caves to NOM pressure

After a day in which the National Organization for Marriage, an adjunct of the Roman Catholic Church, pressured former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty by bitching about him to various media and encouraging the people on its email list to call him, Pawlenty caved. (Politico)

“After reviewing the pledge, the governor wanted to sign it and we sent it to them this morning,” said Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant.

Because, of course Pawlenty wanted to pledge his fealty to a special interest group that is shrinking in size and influence and to announce that he, too, would appoint puppet judges to the federal bench so as to allow the executive branch to dictate the outcome of legislation.

Klassy.

Maggie Gallagher Pines for Pawlenty

These eyes are for Pawlenty.

She also has designs on Perry. National Organization for Marriage’s Maggie Gallagher appeared on CBN to discuss NOM’s marriage pledge which has already been signed by Minnesota Rep. Michelle Bachman, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. The wide-ranging pledge (CBN’s interviewer strangely called it “narrowly-written”) calls on GOP presidential candidates to:

• Support the Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman,
• Defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court,
• Apply a marriage litmus test for judges and the attorney general,
• Appoint a presidential commission to investigate so-called “harassment” of traditional marriage supporters,
• Demand that marriage be put to a vote in the District of Columbia.

Gallagher expects Texas gov. Rick Perry to sign the pledge one he officially announces his candidacy. But one major holdout,  Minnesota gov. Tim Pawlenty, has Gallagher pleading for his support:

Well we will certainly offer the opportunity to Governor Rick Perry and any other major candidates who step into the race. We understand that before you’re declared candidate it would probably not be appropriate to start signing pledges. The big question is what’s going to happen with Governor Tim Pawlenty, who explicitly declined to sign NOM’s marriage pledge this week. We’re hoping the governor changes his mind because we think it’s pretty peculiar for governor Pawlenty, who has been a champion for marriage in Minnesota, to refuse to do the same for the people of America.

Gallagher is counting on victories in passing anti-marriage amendments in Minnesota and North Carolina, and expects a rollback on marriage in New Hampshire in January.

Click here to read the full transcript.

Mitt Romney declares anti-gay litmus test for judicial appointments

NOTE: The header, which originally said “Mitt Romney declares anti-gay litmus test for Supreme Court nominees”, was revised for accuracy.

The National Organization for Marriage is bragging that Republican presidential candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney have signed their pledge:

I, ______________, pledge to the American people that if elected President, I will:

One, support sending a federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman to the states for ratification.

Two, nominate to the U.S. Supreme Court and federal bench judges who are committed to restraint and to applying the original meaning of the Constitution, appoint an attorney general similarly committed, and thus reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution.

Three, defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act vigorously in court.

Four, establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.

Five, advance legislation to return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote on marriage.

Most of this is just a declaration of personal anti-gay animus and is neither a pledge of intent or likelihood.

There is almost no chance at all that two-thirds of each house of Congress would vote for a Federal Marriage Amendment and that likelihood decreases significantly with each passing year. By the time that the 2013-2017 Presidential term begins, it doesn’t matter what a President might “support”, it isn’t going to happen.

Also by that time, it is likely that the constitutionality of DOMA3 will have progressed out of the initial federal court hearings and on to appeal. And having declined to defend the law, the Justice Department cannot decide to step in and resume authority once a new Attorney General is in the office. At most, the Attorney General could file an amicus brief, which any of these nominees could do on their own today.

As for establishing a presidential commission to look at how gays are harassing and threatening homophobes, that would be political suicide. Not only would it appear to oh, just about anyone, as homophobic and an abuse of power, but it would be embarrassing to NOM when the commission released its report. The boycott of El Coyote may sound like a “threat” to NOM’s target audience, but “the gays didn’t eat there after the owner gave to Prop 8” is going to sound like a statement of the obvious to the rest of the country.

Equally stupid would be an effort on the part of the federal government to interfere with the District’s Human Rights Act so as to exclude gay people. That is the only mechanism by which legislation could “return to the people of the District of Columbia their right to vote” on limiting any of the District’s provisions based on sexual orientation. Only two Senators and 37 members of the House were willing to sign on to an amicus brief arguing that the Human Rights Act didn’t cover gay marriage. Even fewer would sign on to legislation to amend the “The Human Rights Act” specifically to exclude gay people from coverage.

Now none of this is to say that Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum would not try to do all of the above. They live in a bubble in which the things that they say actually make sense and where people admire them and their values. But both are wackadoodles with no chance of winning the Presidency.

Mitt Romney, however, is a credible candidate. And he should have thought a bit more before signing onto this pledge. Because he just made a declaration that has potential to negatively impact his campaign.

No, it was not the wacky appeal to ancestor-worship that has our “Founding Fathers” writing the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. Palinist history is about symbolism, not fact, so this is not much of a liability to Romney at this stage.

Nor is it unusual for Republican nominees to declare their support for a commitment to constraint and to oppose those who “legislate from the bench.”

But this pledge goes way beyond such language. And by signing, Mitt Romney took the unusual step of declaring that his judicial nominees must reject the idea that the US Constitution protects the marriage rights of gay people. Mitt Romney announced that he has a litmus test.

In practice, litmus tests for judicial nominees are complicated.

An administration makes judicial appointments that it believes share its ideology. But the nominees themselves are bound by professional ethics from declaring their position on matters that are expected to appear before them. And most aren’t much favorable of the notion that your whim is to be followed rather than their consideration of the facts, weight of precedent, or argument of the litigants.

But regardless of whether or not litmus test questioning occurs in private, declaring a litmus test for judicial nominees, especially this early in a political campaign, is not wise. And at some point, a reporter is going to ask Romney the unanswerable question, “Considering Ted Olson’s legal stature and established conservative credentials, would his support for same-sex marriage disqualify him from an appointment to the federal bench?”

From NOM to NOME

Louis Marinelli, the former coordinator for National Organization for Marriage’s “Summer for Marriage Tour” who has since left NOM and announced his support for marriage equality, has launched a new group. He’s calling it the National Organization for Marriage Equality, and his web site indicates that NOME “is registering as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.”Marinelli will be hitting the road once again, just like old times.

This summer we plan to travel the country from California to Maine to talk about my change of heart on the issue of marriage equality and talk with conservatives and republicans about why they should support the freedom to marry.

This tour, which is modeled in part after the Summer for Marriage Tour I helped organize last summer for the National Organization for Marriage to oppose same-sex marriage, aims to revisit many of the places NOM visited last year to spread its discriminatory and bigoted message against gay and lesbian citizens.

I am personally responsible for that tour. It was my idea and I proposed it to Brian Brown, NOM’s President, who agreed to endorse and sponsor the project. As a result, I feel compelled to revisit the cities of last year’s marriage tour to meet the thousands of people who came out to meet discrimination and bigotry head on in the streets of their hometowns.

LGBT people turned out in droves when NOM’s tour was winding its way in 2010, often outnumbering NOM supporters at many stops. I think it would be good to turn out again. Marinelli writes that this time, “I look forward to seeing many of the same faces and families I saw last year so that this year I can stand with them, not against them.”

Minnesota says NOM must disclose donors

The State of Minnesota has joined the long list of states that refuse to give the National Organization for Marriage a special exemption from voter laws due to their claimed fears of gay reprisals. (Independent)

The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board ruled today that corporate donations to groups advocating for or against a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage must be disclosed. The Minnesota Family Council (MFC) and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) argued that supporters of marriage equality would commit violence against their donors if they were made public. On Thursday, the board disagreed.

NOM suffers from the delusion that “stand up ye soldiers of the cross” is a stand that should be done in secret without the possibility of reprisals from those who find out that you are trying to hurt their family. Because, you see, Teh Gheys are vengeful, scary, dangerous, and violent. Why, if it was discovered that someone was a major donor to NOM, they might lose business from gays and other people who don’t want to fund discrimination. They might even get the cold shoulder at their florist and someone at choir practice might look at them with disdain.

And that’s not fair!!

But, so far, neither campaign boards nor judges have found this argument convincing. And NOM loses this argument wherever it is presented.

So does that mean that NOM is going to comply? Are they going to disclose exactly which mega-wealthy Catholics are funding their efforts to replace civil law with Catholic doctrine?

No way. They haven’t any time in the past and they aren’t going to start now.

And what is Minnesota going to do about it? Nothing.

Until a state is ready and willing to throw Brian Brown in jail for contempt of court and keep him there until the names are disclosed, NOM is going to continue to thwart justice and thumb their noses at the legal system. And they know that actually jailing Brown or freezing NOM’s assets is so politically dangerous and that they have so many friends in powerful places who share their theocratic zeal that enforcing these rulings is impossible.

NOM believes themselves to be exempt from the law. Sadly, in practical terms, they may be right.

New Yorkers support marriage bill

A Quinnipiac poll reveals support for New York’s new marriage equality law. Between June 20 and June 26, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,317 registered voters with a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.

24. Would you support or oppose a law that would allow same-sex couples to get married?

Support 54%
Oppose 40%
DK/NA 5%

Considering that this poll bracketed the June 24 vote and that the marriage bill occupied front page coverage during that period, it is fair to assume that the results for the theoretical “a law” can be imputed to the law that was passed.

This certainly must not be happy news for Maggie Gallagher and the National Organization for Marriage. Their stated plan for reversing marriage equality in New York is to

PHASE 1: Elect pro-marriage majorities next November that will approve a marriage amendment in both the Assembly and Senate during the 2013 legislative session.

PHASE 2: Protect pro-marriage candidates in the 2014 elections, so that the amendment can receive final legislative approval in the 2015 legislative session.

PHASE 3: Successfully pass the ballot measure when it goes before voters in November 2015.

I don’t think that this is intended as self-parody.

NOM’s “Jesus” Is Crying

This is what you’ll find on the National Organization for Marriage’s facebook page right now.

Also, “vengeance is mine,” sayeth Maggie Gallagher.

[Via Alvin McEwen]