One of the hardest things for lay people to understand when it comes to court rulings is that they are often not about what they seem. Roe vs. Wade, for example, was not about abortion, per se, it was actually about privacy and the limits of government. If we are to believe the Chief Justice of California’s Supreme Court, Ron George, the ruling over the voter approved ban on same sex marriage just handed down was not about marriage at all but rather about California’s system of democracy and the ease with which we have amended our state constitution. The court’s ruling sided with the argument of Ken Starr, yes he of Monica Lewinsky fame, that Californians have the right to amend their state’s constitution how they want, and that Proposition 8 was the democratic fruit of that right. This despite Starr’s admission when pressed that, in context of his argument, should the voters also decide to outlaw people of differing skin tones from marrying, or eating at lunch counters, then they could also do that.

In other words, the court was essentially agreeing with Starr that the voters of California, by virtue of our system of voter approved propositions, have reserved the right of constitutional review previously only thought to belong to the country’s top court. It treated a California state amendment as though it had the weight of one decided by going through the federal amendment process. It was one of the dumber decisions in recent memory and the primary reason for it was the court decided to punt rather than actually decide lest they be called “activist judges.” They decided that the limits of their power were not equal to the task before them, regardless of how obvious that task was and how clear their responsibility is. And it is a very easy task indeed. There are clear prohibitions, both in the Constitution and in legal precedent, to excluding rights from a segment of the population unless those rights have been surrendered by either committing a crime so as to be incarcerated or joining the military. It’s just that simple. This ruling was just like a pile of dogshit, not hard to know what to do about it but the court just didn’t want to touch it.

The author Gore Vidal once noted that there was no such thing as a “homosexual,” there are only “homosexual acts.” That is indeed true, and unless homosexual acts are criminalized, rights cannot be withheld for engaging in them. This has always been the key distinction that meatheads who compare man on dog sex or pedophilia to gay sexual activity don’t get- that stuff is against the law. Like it or not, gay sex isn’t.

And so it will now, and perhaps rightly, fall the the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on this issue unless they try to dodge it. Indeed some suggest that the California ruling was a deliberate ploy to move it to the high court so that it can be decided federally which is really where it belongs (though that still doesn’t excuse the California court for punting). Should the court take the case, it should not be a hard one for it. There are ample precedents that would have to be ignored for a ban on same sex marriage to be upheld. In Meyer vs. the State of Nebraska, in 1923, the court ruled that marriage is a right that is fundamentally included in both the due process clauses in both the 5th and 14th Amendments. Loving vs. Virginia in 1967 ruled against prohibitions against skin color or “interracial marriage.” Anyone who tried to argue before the court that the term “marriage” deserves respect by virtue of it’s time honored definition need look no further than the Declaration of Independence and the term “All men are created equal.” The definition of “men” at that writing did not include those of African descent, let alone women, so it’s definition has been expanded to include all of us.

So, the case is very clear. Unless the highest court in the land is going to claim that those who participate in legal activities that are unpopular with some, even the majority, literally resign membership in the human race by doing so, it’s a no-brainer. Clearly some on the court will fight this but they will just be forced to hold their noses and deal with it and we can put this issue to rest.

Also posted at Newsvine

Try to imagine yourself bound in a straight jacket, naked from the waist down, with your ass and your genitals exposed, facing a snarling dog. The cement floor you are lying on is covered in blood from the last guy who got bitten repeatedly. If you are a man, the prospect of having your outdoor plumbing exposed as a potential doggy treat ads a new and very special layer of horror. And, naturally, you have a large rubber plug shoved up your rectum so that you can’t go to the bathroom until someone kindly takes it out.


Seriously, try to actually imagine this. Were this a single occasion it would be horrific enough, but imagine days…months…years of it? And then imagine that you are completely innocent, a victim of a random sweeping of the street. No lawyer, no one listening to you.


This is exactly the kind of Hell on Earth that the Bush Administration created. It’s essential to note here that, Hollywood depictions of interrogations aside, this was NOT how it was done before the Bush crew took over. This is not just because we were all such nice guys before them, and the were so nasty, though they certainly were. It’s because before Bush, interrogations were done by professionals who knew how to get information. Torture is not how you do it, but the know-it-all henchmen of the Bush crew swept aside convention and played out their adolescent “24″ games, which so appalled the FBI that they checked out of the process. These are not “enhanced techniques” they are war crimes, plain and simple.


The point is that horror like this cannot just be walked away from. If a friend or family member were abducted and treated this way would you listen to someone say that it’s enough that those who did this still had their jobs but would no longer engage is this activity? I’m thinking pretty much no. I’m thinking that, like me, you’d fight until your dying breath to see them brought to justice.


America is our family and every rubber butt stopper that was shoved into an innocent person, and even a not-so-innocent person, was inserted into all of us. Forget that laughable argument that some legal memos pumped out of the White House by lawyers as payment for gigs as judges made it somehow okay to treat people this way- even guilty people. That stopper is going to stay embedded in all of us and only fair trials for those who perpetrated these heinous crimes will give us any relief.