Fearing Supreme Court Smackdown, Evangelicals Discourage Prop 8 Appeal

Just maybe some within the lunatic fringe known as the Christian Right have learned something from Judge Vaughan Walkers 138 page opinion in Perry v. Schwarzenegger. And what would the lesson be? That the only basis for denying same sex couples civil marriage rights rests solely upon religious based prejudice. Something that doesn't fare too well when it comes to justifying stripping other citizens of CIVIL legal rights. Indeed, without any objective facts or legitimate experts to back up the religious based opinions of Christianists, the likelihood is that in a court of law the result may be that of hitting the brick wall of the 1st Amendment and the 14th Amendment. For this reason, some Christianists are discouraging an appeal of the ruling in Perry out of a fear that if the case goes all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court, the Christianists will lose and gay marriage will become a nationwide phenomenon. These voices of caution would greatly prefer to keep the "damage" as they see it limited to California. Mother Jones looks at this situation where the enemies of LGBT equality would prefer that no appeal move forward to the Ninth Circuit and/or the U. S. Supreme Court. Here are some highlights:
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Maybe we should just let California be the Gay State. That's the latest thinking of some prominent red-state evangelicals, who fear that appealing California's recent same-sex marriage ruling to the Supreme Court could backfire, legalizing gay matrimony from sea to shining sea.
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Last week, the case for signing over California to the Prince of Darkness was made on American Family Radio by David Barton, a Christian activist who served as vice-chairman of the Texas Republican Party from 1998 to 2006. "Right now, the damage is limited to California only," Barton noted. But he feared that Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote in an appeal, "will go for California, which means that all 31 states [that have banned gay marriage] will go down in flames."
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Barton went on: Well, I'm telling you, that's what's being argued by a lot of folks now. . .Knowing what Kennedy has already done in two similar cases to this and knowing that he's the deciding vote, the odds are 999 out of 1000 that they'll uphold the California decision.
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If they do, there's not a marriage amendment in the country that can stand. And so the problem is that instead of California losing its amendment, now 31 states lose their amendment. And that won't happen if California doesn't appeal its decision. It's just California that loses its amendment.

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On a personal note, while I would love to see gay marriage nationwide, for now I hope that there is no appeal. Better to allow California to have gay marraiges for the time being and wait for some other case to take the trend nationwide. In the final analysis, I simply do not trust the U.S. Supreme Court to do the right thing even though a plain reading of the U. S. Constitution, combined with previous Supreme Court rulings, should dictate that all gay marriage bans are unconstitutional.