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In the wake of Judge Vaughn Walker’s controversial decision finding Proposition 8 (California’s constitutional amendment protecting true marriage) unconstitutional, an internal spat has broken out between two different Christian legal societies about the manner in which the defense of Prop. 8 was handled.
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[A]ccording to Liberty Counsel, the ADF kept them out of the Proposition 8 trial because they disagreed over legal strategy - a disagreement that LC says resulted in a radically weakened argument that ignored the central reasons to oppose homosexual "marriage."
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At the time, the ADF's Andrew Pugno said that Liberty Counsel should not defend the proposition. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Pugno has said that the Campaign for California Families (CCF), Liberty Counsel's client, "represents the extreme fringe and is not representative of the coalition that got [Proposition 8] passed." "The proponents believed that intervention by that group would harm, not help, our case," Pugno told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN).
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Matthew Staver, chairman of the LC , denies that that the CCF had worked against Proposition 8, and told LSN that there were two reasons the ADF opposed LC's intervention. "First was a misplaced idea of competition or domination of the case," he said. "And second, a desire to narrow the defense so as not to focus or even address the consequences of homosexuality and homosexual marriage." "We wanted to include that as part of our defense," he continued.
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According to Staver, the ADF "basically gave away the essence of the case, because they wanted to shy away from homosexuality and really were not willing to take the issue directly head on."
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Staver believes that addressing the negative aspects of homosexuality is "a very critical component to the case, as to why same-sex marriage would ultimately harm marriage." The ADF nevertheless "completely refused to put on that kind of testimony," he said.
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