“Family” groups file amicus for Perry’s Prop 8 Proponents

Timothy Kincaid

September 23rd, 2010

Liberty Institute. Brief signed by (from left) Justin Butterfield, Hiram Sasser, Kelly J. Shackelford (lead counsel), and Jeffrey Mateer (not pictured).

A collection of “family” groups have given their opinion to the Ninth Circuit about Judge Walker’s findings in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. They include:

Liberty Institute
Association of Maryland Families
California Family Council
Center for Arizona Policy
Citizens for Community Values
Cornerstone Action
Cornerstone Family Council
Delaware Family Policy Council
Family Action Council of Tennessee
The Family Foundation
The Family Policy Council of West Virginia
Family Policy Institute of Washington
Florida Family Policy Council
Georgia Family Council
Illinois Family Institute, Independence Law Center
Iowa Family Policy Center
Louisiana Family Forum Action
Massachusetts Family Institute
Michigan Family Forum
Minnesota Family Council
Missouri Family Policy Council
Montana Family Foundation
New Jersey Family First
New Jersey Family Policy Council
North Carolina Family Policy Council
Oklahoma Family Policy Council
Oregon Family Council
Palmetto Family Council
Pennsylvania Family Institute
Wisconsin Family Action
WyWatch Family Action

You might get a chuckle from their opening line:

Liberty Institute is a non-profit law firm dedicated to the preservation of civil rights and the promotion of individual liberty.

Now that’s good comedy.

Basically the premise of this amicus brief is that finding Proposition8 to be unconstitutional violates the rights of Californians to be self-governed and to rant and rail about “activist judges”. It reads not as a legal document but more like a political tirade.

At times throughout our nation’s history, courts have subjugated the will of the people to the judges’ own desires, often with disastrous results. Doing so is anti-democratic and ignores that self-governance is an important and essential part of liberty. Such actions by unelected judges disregard that the Bill of Rights provides that those powers not granted to the United States are reserved to the states and the people.

They go on quite a bit about how courts are “the elite few” and how “Judicial activism impose the views of the “enlightened” judiciary on the masses”. Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that insulting the judiciary will endear yourself and your ideals with, ahem, judges.

Then, in what can I can only imagine was conceived while on meth, they threaten revolution if they don’t get their way. I kid you not.

They quote the Declaration of Independence and then say,

In significant part because of the Crown’s removal of the legislative power from the people and vesting of it in persons unconstitutionally qualified to legislate, and because true governments “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” the colonists considered that “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. If the district court’s decision to abolish the citizens of California’s laws and to invest itself with the power to legislate for the people of California is upheld, the “new Guard” is but following the old and we have come full circle.

I’ve always known “family” groups to be a bit out there, but this is colossally stupid.

Lindoro Almaviva

September 23rd, 2010

I think this is exactly the kind of Amicus brief that will ultimately let the courts see all the animus that is T the very bottom of all these desitions. Is it collosally stupid? Yes, but that should surprise no one. I think that no other amicus brief will help the courts more that this specific one and I do hope the attach it to their decision so future generations have an opportunity to examine the kind of bigotry that will define this generation; just like racism defines the 50’s and sexism (to a certain extend) defines thefirst decade of the XXth century.

Transplanted Lawyer

September 23rd, 2010

Holy crap. You’re telling me a lawyer wrote and signed his or her name to this? You don’t persuade a court to rule in your side’s favor by threatening armed resistance to an adverse decision. At least, that’s not what they taught me in law school.

Mihangel apYrs

September 23rd, 2010

1
your founding fathers WERE in revolt against their lawful sovereign. Despite the fact that the relationship was tyrannical (in its ancient sense) it was legal and only politcal differences caused the rebellion

2
France, a despotic state, enabled the foundation of the USA and supported it thereafter. as a POLITICAL tool.

I don’t disagree with the need to emancipate the States, I do question the interpretation given by some historians to the dynamics. George 3 was a good king (despite his disease) trying to keep his kingdom together. Poiticians took advantage of the interregnums

Seraphiel

September 23rd, 2010

Why would someone who has so much contempt for the concept of an independent judiciary even go into the legal profession?

Theo

September 23rd, 2010

I am surprised that NOM is not on the brief. Maybe it would have been embarrassing for them to join, considering that they have pending federal lawsuit that asks an unelected judge to invalidate the Maine Clean Elections law, which was passed by the the self-governing people of Maine by a vote of 54-46.

Richard Rush

September 24th, 2010

Certainly it’s fair to notice how the amicus animus brief signed by that list of groups is another reminder of how virtually 100% of our organized opposition is Christian-based. But we must remember that they don’t represent anywhere near all Christians.

So, to those of you feeling despondent, I say “hang in there” because, any day now, we’ll receive word of the amicus brief signed by all of the gay-supportive moderate Christian-based groups . . . right?

cd

September 24th, 2010

These ‘family’ lawyers even mug like the mafia.

The game the Religious Right has gotten into lately is a collective effort to generate an individual-level political privilege for tradition/traditional religion.

They’re riding and helping along the Tea Party/libertarian so as to get people believing in a disbelief in and dogmatic diminishing of government powers. These ‘family’ organizations and foundations and whatnot are the other prong- trying to get the federal courts to buy their twisted reading of the First Amendment as a license for purported adherents of contrarian religions to get out of compliance with anti-discrimination laws.

customartist

September 24th, 2010

These are the very same groups that wish to protect families by Opposing anti-bullying legislation in cases such as Bully Lucas’.

They are pathetic, Not of God, and they must be stopped.

box frog

September 24th, 2010

Only one in 100 Britons is gay despite long-held myth…but 71% of public say they are Christian

By Steve Doughty
The Daily Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
September 24, 2010

The first ever official count of the gay population has found that only one in 100 adults is homosexual.

The figure explodes the assumption – long promoted by social experts and lobbyists – that the number is up to ten times higher than this at one in ten.

And in further evidence that Britain remains a traditional society, 71% told the same survey that they still regarded themselves as Christian.

The Office for National Statistics said 1.3 per cent of men are gay and 0.6 per cent of women are lesbian.

The ONS figures explode the myth that one in ten are homosexual

Tying the knot: Chris Bryant MP, right, and Jared Cranney are among the 1.3% of men who are gay. ONS figures explode the myth that one in ten are homosexual

Another 0.5 per cent consider themselves bisexual, according to the figures gathered from questions put to nearly 250,000 – the biggest survey possible outside a full national census.

This means that, in total, around 1.5 per cent of the population is either homosexual or bisexual.

The number is far lower than the estimate used as a basis for the distribution of millions of pounds in public money to sexual equality causes.

Priya Lynn

September 24th, 2010

Box Frog, you’re sadly mistaken about that survey. 1.5 percent of the British population is willing to admit to a survey taker that they are gay or bisexual – a much higher percentage than that is actually gay or bisexual.

Emily K

September 24th, 2010

I think box frog’s real name is “box troll.”

Timothy Kincaid

September 24th, 2010

box frog, the discussion about that survey is here.

Rob San Diego

September 24th, 2010

These people must never watch Glen Beck. You see Glen teaches us in his daily classroom that the founding old white fathers were the smartest people on the planet. That they came up with a 3 branch government to make sure that the tyranny of the majority does not suppress the minority by having unelected judges who will never be held accountable to the people as elected officials are. Did anyone notice just how white they are in that photo of Liberty Counsel?

But fear not, it is only time that some gay drug sex scandal will befall one of their hierarchy just as it’s doing to pastors all over the world.

Mundus

September 26th, 2010

Is there not something strange about various groups making a submission to a body whose authority, within that submission, they claim not to recognise ? Am I missing something here ?

Secondly, if they really believed that the courts had no right to rule on such matters they would declare so in advance of any ruling – instead we see that these groups only engage in such rhetoric after rulings have come down that are not to their liking. It would appear their definition of ‘judicial activism’ is ‘courts that produce rulings we don’t agree with’…

These people may, no doubt, be perfectly sincere in their theological outlook, but it would seem that they lack a solid grasp of both logic and consistency.

Mundus

September 26th, 2010

Box Frog – you ARE aware that equality is not contingent on the number of people that is treated unequally ?

What percentage of a population must a badly treated minority reach before deserving full rights and legal recognition – 5%, 8%, 33% ?

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