{"id":188744,"date":"2010-08-04T18:48:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T23:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/04\/h8-amendment-declared-unconstitutional\/"},"modified":"2010-08-04T18:48:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T23:48:00","slug":"h8-amendment-declared-unconstitutional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/04\/h8-amendment-declared-unconstitutional\/","title":{"rendered":"H8* Amendment Declared Unconstitutional"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/08\/05\/us\/05prop.html\">ruled that California&#8217;s anti-gay marriage initiative is unconstitutional<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>A federal judge in San Francisco struck down California\u2019s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage  on Wednesday, handing a temporary victory to gay rights advocates in a legal battle that seems all but certain to be settled by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n<p>Wednesday\u2019s decision is just the latest chapter of what is expected to be a long legal battle over the ban \u2014 Proposition 8, which was passed in 2008 with 52 percent of the vote &#8212; and proponents were already promising to appeal, confidently predicting that higher courts would be less accommodating to the other side than Vaughn R. Walker, the judge who issued the ruling. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>You can be sure of that last bit.<\/p>\n<p>While I cannot speak to the proclivities of the 9<sup>th<\/sup> Circuit Court of Appeals, I know that they are a rather liberal circuit, but that is it, but I am aware of the proclivities of the Supreme Court, and I cannot see this ruling surviving there.<\/p>\n<p>My assesment of the court:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Scalia has publicly stated his position, even before hearing a case in numerous public speeches. <\/li>\n<li>Alito and Roberts chomping  at the bit to throw red meat to the &#8220;cultural conservatives.&#8221; <\/li>\n<li>Thomas wants to find an ethnic group to crap on.<\/li>\n<li>Kennedy being of an age where gay marriage squicks him out, notwithstanding his opinion striking down the criminalization of gay sex in <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Lawrence v. Texas<\/span>.<\/li>\n<li>Between Sotamayor and (almost certainly on the court by the time that this is heard) Kagan, there is at least one vote, and probably 2 votes there for &#8220;Civil unions is good enough,&#8221; which is, after all, Barack Obama&#8217;s official position.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>What worries me is that if Roberts has the votes, he will cast the broadest net possible, as he did in the <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Citizens United<\/span> and <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Heller<\/span>, and so do his level best reinstitute the criminalization of homosexuality, and probably take a big hack at <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Roe v. Wade<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good decision, and I support it, but I think that the ratf%$#ers on the Supreme Court will do whatever they can to turn this to evil.<\/p>\n<p>What needs to be done now is to put Scalia on his back heel.  He has prejudged the case, and has admitted it in public, so he must recuse himself.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, he won&#8217;t, not unless the pressure placed on him forces him to.<\/p>\n<p>We need to go after him the way Scientology went after judges they targeted, though obviously no one should <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asiantribune.com\/scientologists-killed-usa-court-judges-dog\">drown his pet dog<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I am saying that it is clear that on numerous occasions, in numerous public events, Antonin Scalia has stated that his mind is made up on gay marriage.<\/p>\n<p>As such any rudimentary understanding of legal ethics mandates that he recuse himself, and that Antonin Scalia does not posses even a rudimentary level of legal ethics, so unless there is a constant drum beat pointing out this fact, he will sit on the case with no intention of reviewing either the facts of the law fairly.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Proposition 8=H8=Hate, OK?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that California&#8217;s anti-gay marriage initiative is unconstitutional: A federal judge in San Francisco struck down California\u2019s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, handing a temporary victory to gay rights advocates in a legal battle that seems all but certain to be settled by the Supreme Court. &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1136,971,972,1030],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-civil-rights","category-justice","category-lgbtq"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188744"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}