In
the trial court, the state had argued that restricting marriage to a man and a
woman would make heterosexual couples act more responsibly when they had sex.
The state
is Utah, which for two brief weeks allowed—well,
was forced to allow—1,300 same sex couples to marry. In a state that is heavily
Mormon, that didn’t sit well with the majority of residents, and the attorney general of the state
lost no time getting up to the US
Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. And they said, “no
dice—we’re not giving you a stay until you can appeal.” And why? Here’s
The Salt Lake Tribune:
According
to the order, the state failed to demonstrate it was suffering
"irreparable harm" as a result of the legalization of same-sex
marriage and also failed to show it had a "significant likelihood" of
prevailing in its appeal to the circuit court.
Right—that’s
pretty clear. So then the state, desperate to get
the ruling on hold, went to the Supreme Court. Nor is that word “desperate”
only mine: google “Utah desperate” and you get the following Christian
Science Monitor headline:
Utah, growing desperate, to ask Supreme Court to halt gay
marriages
The
request went
to Sonia Sotomayor,
who oversees the 10th court. And she had the choice to rule on it
alone, or give it to the entire court. And what did she do? Turfed it to the
entire court. And they, late last week, finally gave Utah what it wanted. So
for less than 20 days same sex marriage was legal.
And
then it wasn’t.
In the
process of getting to the Supreme Court, Utah dropped its insane contention
that barring same sex marriage would force heterosexual couples to “act more
responsibly when having sex.” Instead, according to The New York Times, they fell back on the old argument:
children do better when raised in father / mother household.
What was
the problem? Well, here’s
the Times itself:
Lawyers for
the couples challenging Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage responded that the assertion “is not true.”
For evidence, they cited “the scientific consensus of every national health
care organization charged with the welfare of children and adolescents,” and
listed nine such groups. The view of the groups, the challengers said, “based
on a significant and well-respected body of current research, is that children
and adolescents raised by same-sex parents, with all things being equal, are as
well-adjusted as children raised by opposite-sex couples.”
Utah responded that it would not be swayed by
“politically correct trade associations,” referring to, among others, the
American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the
American Psychiatric Association. “We are not ruled by experts,” the state’s
brief said.
OK—I
agree with the last line….
Finally,
Utah cooked up one last argument. The Supreme Court had ruled in favor of
diversity in deciding who could attend public universities, and so they
announced something called “gender diversity.” Scratching your head? A man and
a woman—that’s diverse. Two guys or two women? Not so much.
The
three arguments are breathtaking in their absurdity. But does it surprise me? Of
course not—the state is hardly going to come out and say the truth, which is
that the idea of two men or women married is repugnant to them. But what does
bug me? Well, here are the first two sentences of the Times’s article:
The
Supreme Court’s order last week halting same-sex marriages in Utah was two sentences
long. It was provisional and cryptic, and it added nothing to the available
information on where the Supreme Court stands on the momentous question of
whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Well,
who am I to tackle the Times, and especially Adam Liptak, the author of
the article? But I think this stay tells us a lot about the Supreme Court. And
tells us that the court, like Utah, is also desperate. They know perfectly well
that all of the states who have passed laws defining marriage as between a
woman and a man have disenfranchised five to ten percent of the population.
They know perfectly well that history will find it amazing that we could have
believed in such a thing. They know that all but the most conservative of them
would have to find the defense of marriage laws unconstitutional.
In
fact, the “victories” in June were anything but. What did the court do?
Nothing—they ruled on technicalities. And they’ll do it again—because the 10th
Court of Appeals put it pretty plainly: Utah didn’t have “a ‘significant
likelihood’ of prevailing in its appeal to the circuit court.”
They’re
buying time. But here’s the question: how will they get out of it this time?
