Prop 8 Round 3

Round 1 was won by the voters

Proposition 8 is an amendment to California’s Constitution that limits marriage to a man and a woman which was passed by a majority of California voters. Today, Monday, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals hearing on Proposition 8 begins. Even before the hearing has begun, there is already a controversy. (The hearing will be televised live on CSPAN.)

There are three judges from the 9th Circuit Court that have been assigned to the case by a "random" process. I use "air quotes" around the word "random" because the only description of the computer selection process that I have found says that it involves an "elaborate formula weighing case complexity and each judge's workload". The words "random" and "weighted" together mean that the process is less a matter of chance than one would otherwise be led to believe. Throw in the phrase "elaborate formula" and you get a selection process that is inscrutable to the outside observer.

One of the names chosen from this elaborately distorted hat is Stephen Reinhardt. If you are a supporter of same-sex "marriage" this is an enormous stroke of luck. Jude Reinhardt is "known as perhaps the 9th Circuit's most liberal jurist". His wife, Ramona Ripston, has been the head of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California for the past 38 years. The ACLU is actively involved in this case on the side of the proponents of same-sex "marriage" as you would expect. Judge Reinhardt was asked to recuse himself from the case, but refused saying that he can be "impartial".

All told, two out of three of the judges that were picked were appointed by Democrats. Supporters of Proposition 8, which would have effectively banned same-sex marriages in California, now say that they expect to lose this appeal. This leaves the prospect of going before the U.S. Supreme Court.

And it cannot be left unmentioned that Judge Walker who first ruled against Proposition 8 is openly homosexual. Prior to Walker's radically biased decision against Proposition 8 we had this reassuring statement from the National Center for Lesbian Rights, "There is nothing about Walker as a judge to indicate that his sexual orientation, other than being an interesting factor, will in any way bias his view." Lady Luck seems to be shining down on the LGBT parade through the California court system.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky (the new vice president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops) has warned that if the courts are allowed to overturn Proposition 8 the impact will be “akin to Roe v. Wade.”  “In a sense, today is like 1970 for marriage,” he said. “If, in 1970, you knew that Roe v. Wade were coming in two or three years, what would you have done differently?”

As I discussed in a previous article once the "right" of gay "marriage" is established, the freedom of religion of Christians will find itself under a growing attack. Already some Christian organizations have been declared "hate groups" because they uphold Christian teachings regarding homosexuality. Isn't it just a bit odd that the same groups that normally ridicule marriage as an obsolete religious tradition, are now adamantly fighting to expand the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples? This is just a cynical legalistic attempt to re-define marriage in a way that strips it of all of its religious significance.

Essentially this is another campaign by the secular humanists to impose their thinking on the rest of us. They are always looking for ways to push Christianity further and further out of the mainstream of American life; until Christians are effectively banned from practicing religion in public.