California AG's Brief Finds Proposition 8 in Violation of U.S. Constitution

In what is a stunning opposite to the Obama Justice Department's brief filed in support of DOMA, California Attorney General Jerry Brown has filed a brief that states that that Proposition 8 violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Would that Obama would argue the law rather than Christianist talking points and stop apparently trying to kiss Rick Warren's very wide ample ass. Like many, I continue to be seething over the nasty and gratuitously insulting brief filed by the Justice Department and written by a Mormon hold over from the Bush administration. WTF was Obama thinking. Here are highlights from Box Turtle Bulletin on Jerry Brown's very different brief:

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What a contrast between the California Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice. On the same day in which the Obama administration filed a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court defending the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act,“ California Attorney General Jerry Brown filed a very different brief in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the Prop 8 challenge brought by Ted Olson and David Boies.

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In the brief filed on behalf of the State of California (PDF: 128KB/11 pages), Brown notes that:

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The Attorney General of California is sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States in addition to the Constitution of the State of California. Cal. Const., art. XX, § 3. The United States Constitution is the “supreme law of the land.” Taking from same-sex couples the right to civil marriage that they had previously possessed under California’s Constitution cannot be squared with guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment. Accordingly, the Attorney General answers the Complaint consistent with his duty to uphold the United States Constitution, as Attorney General Thomas C. Lynch did when he argued that Proposition 14, passed by the California voters in 1964, was incompatible with the Federal Constitution..

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The response by the Attorney General addresses each of the numbered paragraphs in the original complaint. The response begins with a stipulation that California’s Domestic Partnerships are not equal to civil marriage and therefore violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution”

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In response to paragraph 1 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that in November 2008 California adopted Proposition 8; that Proposition 8 amended Article I of the California Constitution by adding section 7.5 which provides that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California;” and that the effect of Proposition 8 is to deny gay men and lesbians and their same-sex partners access to civil marriage in California and to deny them recognition of their civil marriages performed elsewhere. The Attorney General admits that lesbians and gay men and their same-sex partners may form domestic partnerships in California pursuant to California Family Code sections 297 through 299.6, and that such domestic partnerships are not equal to civil marriage, and that this unequal treatment denies lesbians and gay men rights guarantees by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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…In response to paragraph 7 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that Proposition 8 denies same-sex couples the right to civil marriage in California, and that it therefore violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

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Brown also invokes Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which struck down laws banning marriage between people of different races:

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In response to paragraph 35 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that the United States Supreme Court found in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1. 12 (1967), that the “freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

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The brief then addresses the Due Process claims: In response to paragraph 38 of the Complaint, the Attorney General admits that, to the extent that Proposition 8 took from Plaintiffs their previously held fundamental right to marry, the measure violates the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on its face.

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Obama may have been a constitutional law professor, but he seems more concerned with imposing Christian Right religious based beliefs on LGBT Americans than he is in upholding equality under the United States Constitution. His promises are apparently not any more trustworthy than the Chimperator's.