The day after the vote, Bishop Jim Mathes of San Diego said, “Whatever the final tally is, this reflects a pretty clear difference of opinion on this question and my sense is that difference of opinion is reflected in the Episcopal Church as well. This gives us reason to continue the very intentional conversation about matters of human sexuality, as long as we hold our opinions gently in this matter remember that we need each other to discern God’s heart in this part of our lives together.”
In a statement released November 5, Bishop Marc Andrus of the San Francisco-based Diocese of California said: “The recognition of the civil rights of lesbian, gay, transgendered and bisexual people is part of the broad shift in consciousness towards which we are moving. Same-sex marriage in California is an important vehicle in the on-going work of making sure all American citizens enjoy the same rights in civil society. This shift in consciousness, including same-sex marriage, is a move towards the good.”
Andrus added that he and “those of us committed to civil rights for all will simply continue to hope, and continue to work” for equality for all. “Perseverance, knowing that God continues to travel with those who are disenfranchised, is a path we know. I trust, however, that the great Californians with whom I live will continue their tradition of forging ahead towards what lies before our whole great country.”
The Rev. Susan Russell, President of Integrity USA, a support group for gay Episcopalians and friends, refused to comment specifically about Proposition 8 until the all provisional and absentee ballots had been counted. However, she said, “the church needs to think about how we respond to the reality of those whose lives and souls are entrusted to our care and ”¦ which side of history it wants to come down on in this matter.”
Sad that ENS could find no Episcopalians who favored Prop. 8 to quote. Even in California there may still be some. The article as written makes it sound as if the “yes” campaign was a Mormon event unworthy of the enlightened, although it does correctly summarize the reasons for support of traditional marriage.
We must continue the conversation while we file lawsuits seeking to destroy the people’s will. The incessant whine began this morning on NPR that a “right to marry” is somehow as important and of the same order as the rights of racial minorities to live and vote. The California Supreme Court has been rebuked and rejected, but they will stick to California again.
My apologies: “stick IT to California again.”
There needs to be some sort of sunset rule so that the same propositions do not keep coming back like a bad penny. L
sore losers, filing frivolous lawsuits.
But to be expected. Remember, virtually every triumph of liberalism (in its current incarnation) has come through the actions of a small group of unelected judges, not through the expressed will of the electorate. The homosexual marriage issue is only the most recent, and perhaps starkest, example of the contrast between the will of the people and the social engineering of liberal judges without an appropriate sense of restraint.
KevinBabb,
I would like to ask a question, and I ask it with respect, looking for a greater understanding of your feelings on the issue (I preface my question because I want to make it clear I am not being polemical; I really would like to know …).
Do you think it would have been better if there had not been judicial action to allow blacks to vote, or to outlaw anti-miscegenation legislation? i.e. assuming these changes would have occurred over time – but not nearly as quickly without judicial intervention – would there have been a benefit that outweighed the delayed granting of rights to affected individuals?
Denbeau, your question is not addressed to me, but it is one I often hear and I’d like to give you my view of it, if you don’t mind. Following the worst of all American wars, 1861-65, amendments were passed which eliminated the ugly compromise necessary to form the Union eight decades earlier. Slavery and discrimination based on ancestry were abolished in the Constitution. It took, very sadly, another century for this good beginning to bear fruit. The Court decisions of the 1950s finally enforced what had already been written into the Constitution. Like, I believe, its Roe v. Wade decision, in Plessy the Court had been wrong.
But there is no amendment or provision in the Constitution requiring or permitting marriage between men and men or women and women. As in Roe v. Wade, when the courts begin to legislate they distort the body politic and cause grave harm. The cases of abortion and gay marriage are not the same as unconstitutional racial discrimination.
[i]Bishop Jim Mathes of San Diego said, “This gives us reason to continue the very intentional conversation about matters of human sexuality, as long as we hold our opinions gently in this matter remember that we need each other to discern God’s heart in this part of our lives together.”[/i]
In other words, “we need to work harder to convince them that we are right and they are wrong.”
I’m surprised that neither of the bishops nor the Rev. Russell has called for mandatory exercise of indaba among the California population.
#4
You said: “There needs to be some sort of sunset rule so that the same propositions do not keep coming back like a bad penny.”
Just so we understand: this proposed sunset rule should be aimed at judges who insist on legislating from the bench, right?
w.w.
No ww, but all such cases. Here in Maine, for example, it is casinos which Maine has said again and again it did not want. But the subject keeps coming back, and now we have racinos in Bangor. There is a difference between persuasion and wearing-your-enemies-out. A proposition, however begun, that has appeared twice in five years (e.g.,) and been turned down, should be forced to wait at least five more years before it appears again – ten years in fact seems a better time. Larry
And, to addto what Katherine said, the activist courts have crossed the line that enforces separation of powers, and crossed it in radical ways. Larry
How is it in the ecclesial something or other that is the ECUSA/TEC/GCC/EO-PAC every GC vote is vox populi vox Dei but suddenly God loses the microphone when they don’t like the outcome? If Obama’s success in CA is righteousness, how is it the same voters screwed up on this?
Consistency in a liberal is like integrity in a liberal – useful when it advances the”cause” – else, nothing to be concerned about.
Denbeau: You raise an interesting issue in Constitutional law: should a Court defer to social attitudes, rather than take bold steps towards rulings that match the Court’s perception of justice? Or, to put it another way, should the Court use prevailing social views as a “gut check” on the judges’ perceptions of social justice?
I was taught in college and law school that the Courts are the weakest branch of government (because they have no mechanism, within the judicial branch, to enforce their rulings, and because they can only take up issues that are brought to them by litigants, as opposed to establishing their own agenda). I was also taught that, accordingly, the Court’s most successful rulings, in terms of compliance, have occurred in those situations where the Court ruled in accordance with prevailing social views, or at most a little bit ahead of it. By the time of the Brown case, most States had integrated school systems as a matter of law. (My own state, Illinois, had already handled the situation in an ingenious way–the year before Brown, Illinois passed a law denying state financial aid to segregated school districts. Thus, almost all previously segregated districts in the state, including the one in my town, were integrated, albeit just barely, before Brown. What a great way of showing people the economic cost of racial prejudice!). At the time of Brown, there were blacks in Congress and the state legislatures, and the military had been integrated. Randolph and the Brotherhood of Railway Porters had established the right of blacks to participate in labor negotiations. The Republican National Convention (although not yet the Democrats) seated black delegates. In other words, the Brown decision is most accurately seen as part of a general social movement toward racial integration, rather than a judicial phenomenon that led the movement. This is also true of the Loving case….by the time that case was decided, a majority of states permitted interracial marriage. In fact, although the Lovings were convicted for the crime of being parties to an inter-racial marriage in Virginia, they had been married in the District of Columbia without incident. By the time that the Supreme Court affirmed laws prohibiting child labor, the participation of children in the labor market had been declining for forty years.
So, to answer your question, I would say that, if one believes that the Court should impose the view of a small number of judges (perhaps as few as five people out of a society of 300,000,000) on the rest of the society, one should also acknowledge that the actions of an activist Court are most successful where the Court tries to give the rest of society a nudge rather than a shove. The situation in California demonstrates that where a Court’s rulings get ahead of the prevailing social views, the Court is going to to be slapped down.
I would like to thank Katherine and KevinBabb for their answers to my question; they were informative, and I learned something (which is always useful :-)).
15, it is inherantly dangerious for a court to consider itself a sitting constitutional convention. Your argument is good if you believe in sesult oriented decisions to quickly advance a particular agenda.
The danger is that it undermines our system of government.
I wholeheartedly agree. If anything, when Court attempts to fulfill the role of a social activist, it gets slapped down–whether the social activism comes from the Right–the Hughes Court in the ’30s, which had to face the Roosevelt court-packing plan,and was ultimately pushed into self-restraint from 1938 onward–or from the Left–the Warren Court in the ’60s, which faced “Impeach Warren” activity, and whose jurisprudence ultimately played a role in the election of Richard Nixon and the birth of the “Silient Majority”.
Denbeau,
Let me answer a question you didn’t ask. It would have been a terrible thing for the country if slavery had been abolished by decree of the supreme court.
The abolition of slavery was done the right way, by constitutional amendment. The 13th, 14th and 15th amendments collectively show that the people collectively
* recognized the existence of laws that discriminated on the basis of race,
* judged such laws to be wrong, and
* willed that the courts take action in striking them down.
Decisions like Brown were attempts to implement that intent. Reasonable people might disagree about whether particular cases were decided correctly, but there is no doubt that the intent is their in the constitution that courts should intervene to strike down racially discriminatory laws.
No such intent can be reasonably discerned in the case of the Ca. constitution and gay marriage. To this day that constitution contains no mention of sexual orientation, nor any discussion of a right to marry.
Through out this whole scenario, everyone has assumed it is just about ‘gay rights.’ To me, it is more about the Supreme Court of the State of California unilateraly changing the law of the state after the electoratae had voted for a law. Judges should NOT legislate from the bench, but they do. Here is the problem, especially on the federal level when judges are appointed for life. They feel that they answer to no one so their opinion is the one that counts. North Carolina has some state supreme court rulings that directly contradict the written word in the constitution. That is what should be being argued, activist judges and the whole government process. Tyrants in black robes are still tyrants.
#14: Re your comment: If Obama’s success in CA is righteousness, how is it the same voters screwed up on this?
Many of us strongly supported Sen. Obama’s candidacy, (though it’s strong to term it ‘righteousness’) while remaining strong supporters of traditional marriage. As in any presidential race, I did not agree 100% with either candidate. (Did you?)
My understanding of BOTH the Democratic and the Republican tickets on this issue was that old non-answer: ‘leave the issue of gay marriage to the states to decide’. Well, several states HAVE decided. Sadly, all it takes to get a proposition on the ballot is boatloads of $$$, and the pro-homosexual ‘marriage’ group has plenty. No doubt it will appear again, at least in Calif. The entire initiative system in most of the states badly needs reform.
Brown was a very bad ruling which clearly illustrated the limitations of specific relief in socially significant cases. The court instead should have awarded huge money damages. A string of money damage awards (2, 3, 4, 5% of GDP with indefinite jail time for noncompliant contempt) would have saved the nation four additional generations of racial grief and a whole lot of ideaological mischief.
Little cabbage, you clearly have not understood the Episcopal bishops. I believe they felt you were homophobic and stand in need of education. You apparently have not yet learned to see the world as they do…you used the words “traditional marriage”. Both are anathema to them.
I fear you took personally what was aimed at the integrity-lacking agendized episcopal funny-dressers in the state of CA.
Denbeau’s #7 captures the dilemma Barry Goldwater faced with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. He concluded it was the wrong way to achieve a noble goal. For this LBJ and the Democrats smeared BG as a racist in the ’64 campaign. Never mind that BG had integrated the AZ Guard before Truman integrated the US Armed Forces and had a record of commitment to civil rights that LBJ could only dream about. Even then, it was all about spin. Fortunately, America came to appreciate BG as one of its greatest elder statesmen.
Mathes is a lot different from the other CA bishops. I suspect that he finds Andrus and Bruno and their talk very irritating. I know for a fact that he thought keeping Robinson out of Lambeth was a good idea.