Damon W. Root
Towards the end of his landmark majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), where the Supreme Court struck down that state’s anti-sodomy law as a violation of individual liberty, Justice Anthony Kennedy inserted a reference to the looming legal battle over gay marriage. The present case, Kennedy wrote, “does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.”
“Do not believe it,” snapped Justice Antonin Scalia in an angry dissent that accused the majority of having “largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda.” In Scalia’s view, Lawrence threw the door wide open for gay marriage. “Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned.”
Was Scalia correct? We may soon find out. On December 6 a three-judge panel of the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will hear oral arguments in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger. At issue is California’s Proposition 8, the controversial voter initiative which added the phrase “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” to the state constitution. In August, federal district Judge Vaughn Walker—a Ronald Reagan appointee championed by conservative legal hero Edwin Meese—prompted the appeal by striking down Prop. 8 as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, which commands that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.”
Do a search: The First Scandal Adam and Eve.
ReplyDelete