Perry v. Schwarzenegger Closing Arguments

The closing arguments were presented yesterday in Perry v. Schwarzenegger in San Francisco. The full transcript can be found here. Stunningly, the proponents of Proposition 8 made two basic claims: (1) the majority gets to decide what rights, if any, minority groups will have and (2) they don't need any evidence to back up their claims that legalizing same sex marriage would be detrimental to heterosexual marriage. I guess the state of Massachusetts - which has the lowest divorce rate in the USA - is disintegrating and the folks up there just don't realize it. The proponent's arguments in translation means that they believe that their religious views trump all else. End of discussion. Indeed, the arguments of Charles Cooper, lead counsel for the Proposition 8 supporters, sound like something you'd expect to hear out of the mouth of Tony Perkins or Pat Robertson. Here are a few highlights from a synopsis of Cooper's brazen statements via the Washington Post:
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Charles J. Cooper, arguing on behalf of Proposition 8 backers, told Walker that it is "crucial to the public interest" to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. It is "fundamental to the very existence and survival of the human race" that society promote marriage to ensure that procreative relations are in "enduring, stable unions," with a goal that children be raised by both parents.
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Cooper said his side had to show only that including same-sex marriages would not further the "procreation goal that is at the heart of marriage."
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The fallacy in Cooper's argument, of course, is that if marriage is solely for the purpose of procreating children, then the logical extension is that women past child bearing age or who are infertile need to be banned from marriage as well. And couples who decide to never have children I guess need to have their marriages annulled as well. Cooper jumps through disingenuous contortions rather than utter the word "religion" - which is what Proposition 8 is all about. In response, Ted Olson shot back as follows:
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Olson invoked groundbreaking Supreme Court civil rights decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education, which forbade racial segregation in public schools, and Loving v. Virginia, which threw out that state's law against interracial marriage. "Proposition 8 discriminates on the basis of sex the same as Virginia law discriminated on the basis of race," Olson said.
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Interpreting the Constitution is not a job that allows a judge to wait until the public opinion polls improve, Olson said. "Some judge is going to have to decide what we've asked you to decide," he said.
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Personally, in my view, if Proposition 8 is upheld, then true freedom of religion is dead in the USA. Upholding Proposition 8 will have the effect of a de facto establishment of a particularly nasty version of Christianity as the law of the land. It's a form of Christianity based on hate, discrimination and which has caused all kinds of horrors over past centuries.