The full e-screed by Brian Brown is after the jump. I thought I’d spare you that above the fold. After a bizarre and poorly attended NOM visit to Raleigh this week, he sends out an e-blast that sounds like a victory lap (with the required begging for cash).
Where are all these angry Americans who want to “save marriage” with Brian and Maggie? All I saw in Raleigh were some bored seniors and one unhinged woman from NOM’s The Ruth Institute.
Dear Friend of Marriage,
We’ve been busy. Our phone lines are flooded, and the emails are coming in loud and fast. As Rush Limbaugh said in his show on Prop 8, it is clear that “the American people are furious.” Judge Walker’s ruling has ignited a firestorm because it is the latest of a long string of insults and abuse directed at Americans whom the people with power in this country think they can abuse. They think they can ignore the voices and values of the American people, and boy, We the People are tired of it!
The media interviews are just one part of that story, but we have been determined to make sure that your voice and your values get heard in response to this ruling.
…”The American people are boiling. The American people are furious. My e-mails are unbelievable. This federal judge yesterday, this decision, Prop 8, California, has just put people over the edge, and all of these decisions are coming one after another from all corners of the federal government. It’s as if we have absolutely no say in what is going on all around us. Decisions are being made for us, in lieu of us and imposed on us….
“But what is a more fundamental right–a fundamental civil right in our system of government in a supposed republic–than the right to have our voice heard, to have our vote respected? You want to talk about civil rights? It doesn’t matter what the people of California vote. If the left doesn’t like it, they will use the bastardization of power in this country to reverse it. What about our vote being respected? Without that right, we’re no longer a republic.”
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| NOM Updates | August 12, 2010 |
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| Dear Friend of Marriage,
We've been busy. Our phone lines are flooded, and the emails are coming in loud and fast. As Rush Limbaugh said in his show on Prop 8, it is clear that "the American people are furious." Judge Walker's ruling has ignited a firestorm because it is the latest of a long string of insults and abuse directed at Americans whom the people with power in this country think they can abuse. They think they can ignore the voices and values of the American people, and boy, We the People are tired of it! The media interviews are just one part of that story, but we have been determined to make sure that your voice and your values get heard in response to this ruling. Anderson Cooper 360, CBN, Christianity Today, CBS News. ABC News, Associated Press, Reuters, CNN Headline News, USA Today, Janet Parshall's America, Wall Street Journal, Talk of the Nation, Lars Larson, National Review Online, the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee, the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle–even a hit from the Jon Stewart Show. (We LOVED that!–especially when the show crudely cut off Maggie's quote right before Maggie explains the reason she thinks Judge Walker is biased–because his rulings throughout this case have been so one-sided and unprecedented even the Supreme Cour The joke is turning pretty sour, as more and more people are waking up to realize two things: first, that Judge Walker's opinion is so extreme, it's likely to make his ruling vulnerable on appeal. Second, that the American people are not going to appreciate, a few months before an election, being called irrational bigots by a federal judge in San Francisco. I'm sure all his friends and buddies there are backslapping and high-fiving his words. The reason gay activists love the ruling is that it sounds like it was written by an activist, not by a neutral referee. Prop 8 does not ban anything. It establishes in the California Constitution the historic understanding of marriage, after that understanding was overturned by the California supreme court. Prop 8 says, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Judge Walker overturned it on the grounds that no rational person could believe that marriage is a union of husband and wife. Rush Limbaugh put it best: Judge Walker "did not just slap down the will of seven million voters. Those seven million voters were put on trial, a kangaroo court where everything was stacked against them. …Those of you who voted for Prop 8 in California are guilty of hate crimes. You were thinking discrimination. That's what this judge has said! Truly unprecedented." Yes it is. The examples go on and on. But let me just pick one out for you that the mainstream media has totally overlooked. Take "fact" #79: "The Proposition 8 campaign relied on fears that children exposed to the concept of same-sex marriage may become gay or lesbian. The reason children need to be protected from same-sex marriage was never articulated in official campaign advertisements. Nevertheless, the advertisements insinuated that learning about same-sex marriage could make a child gay or lesbian and that parents should dread having a gay or lesbian child." Translation: The campaign never actually said this, but Judge Walker ruled it is a fact anyway. Ed Whelan has pointed out the intellectually dishonest ways Judge Walker's opinion describes the actual record over at Bench Memos. "Among the many distortions and falsehoods that Judge Vaughn Walker has tried to propagate through his anti-Prop 8 ruling," writes Whelan, "is his claim that the Prop 8 proponents … 'failed to build a credible factual record to support their claim that Proposition 8 served a legitimate government interest.' (Slip op. at 11.) Walker's claim, which many in the media evidently unfamiliar with the case have parroted, operates to divert attention from the manifest bias that he exhibited throughout the case and that pervades his ruling. "But in fact the Prop 8 proponents offered a thorough case that Walker almost entirely ignored–a case resting on a broad array of judicial authority, recognized scholarship in various academic fields, extensive documentary evidence, and elementary common sense." He goes on to cite one particularly egregious instance when Walker misdescribes what happened in his own courtroom. Chuck Cooper was arguing that the public purpose of marriage is responsible procreation. Walker asked him for evidence from the testimony. And Cooper proceed to cite the massive number of court cases in which judges have ruled this IS the state's interest in marriage. Whelan goes on to point out, from a legal perspective, "Walker's question–'What testimony in this case supports the proposition?'–wasn't just flip. It was downright stupid–amazingly so, from a judge who has been on the bench for more than two decades. Even if one indulges the mistaken assumption that there was any need for a trial in the case (rather than its being disposed of, one way or the other, on summary judgment, with competing expert and documentary submissions), live witness testimony is merely one form of trial evidence. Exhibits submitted in evidence at trial are another form. And a judge is of course free to, and expected to, take judicial notice of certain facts." Here's the zinger, the knockdown punch from Ed Whelan: A rational person "wouldn't know any of this from Walker's highly distorting clip of Cooper's statement–or from Olson's contemptible misrepresentation of it, or the media's mindless parroting of it." He goes on to say "Walker's outrageous distortion on this point isn't an aberration. As I will show when I have time, it's representative of his entire modus operandi throughout his ruling." Whew! Whelan 1, Walker nowhere after that round! The list of voices criticizing Walker's opinions is growing. Many of them support gay marriage, but can recognize an overwrought opinion when they read it. Steve Chapman, a pro-gay-marriage libertarian columnist at the Chicago Tribune, called the decision "dismal" in its political and legal overreaching. "But it's silly to believe only nut jobs and bigots could rationally oppose same-sex marriage, or that millions of Californians who accept other laws protecting gays were acting irrationally." (Chapman also went on in the same column to endorse polygamy as the next change that should be made to marriage–although not by the courts–because after all, the same arguments apply equally well to polygamy or gay marriage.) If you go to Prop8case.com you can follow along as we post all the scathing critiques emerging of Judge Walker's opinion–and a couple of great cartoons as well! My favorite shows the Founding Fathers gathered around a table, drafting the Constitution. "Let's put gay marriage here, in between abortion and socialized medicine," one of them says. The media likes to say to us, Don't courts have a right to overturn laws? Well, yes, when they are actually against what's in our Constitution. The differences between gay marriage and interracial marriage are huge and one of them is this: Bans on racial discrimination are actually in our Constitution. The entire history of the 14th Amendment makes it clear that race is that amendment's central concern. Gay marriage? Well, even sensible liberals know that's a big stretch. Not all the court news was bad. A federal judge just ruled for Protect Marriage Washington, agreeing that the names of people who sign on to the marriage amendment will not be released, at least not immediately. In Massachusetts and California, advocates of gay marriage put the names of known marriage supporters on websites that encouraged harassment, and in Washington state they threatened to do the same. Some of the leaders of Protect Marriage Washington have faced physical threats. The Supreme Court ruled that signers of referenda generally are not protected from disclosure and remanded back for trial the question of whether or not ma And in Minnesota a pro-gay-marriage Republican, State Senator Paul Koering, just lost his seat. Thanks to you we were able to let voters in Minnesota know that his views and values were not the same as theirs. I'm getting a lot of questions from reporters about the political impact of Judge Walker's ruling. As you know, we at NOM do not believe that marriage should be a partisan issue. But I think anyone who is seriously wondering how Judge Walker's ruling will play in Peoria should listen to Rush Limbaugh. "The American people are boiling. The American people are furious. My e-mails are unbelievable. This federal judge yesterday, this decision, Prop 8, California, has just put people over the edge, and all of these decisions are coming one after another from all corners of the federal government. It's as if we have absolutely no say in what is going on all around us. Decisions are being made for us, in lieu of us and imposed on us…. "But what is a more fundamental right–a fundamental civil right in our system of government in a supposed republic–than the right to have our voice heard, to have our vote respected? You want to talk about civil rights? It doesn't matter what the people of California vote. If the left doesn't like it, they will use the bastardization of power in this country to reverse it. What about our vote being respected? Without that right, we're no longer a republic." Among the people Judge Walker put on trial and implicitly denounced as an irrational bigot in his opinion is Dr. Alveda King. Dr. King spoke at NOM's rally in Atlanta a few days ago, and she said, "As the daughter of Rev. A.D. King and my mother Naomi King, the granddaughter of Martin Luther King Sr. and his lovely beloved wife Alberta King, and the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I come from a long line of Christian soldiers who have supported marriage and family! As I offer this testimony let me urge you to continue to stand firm for marriage by definition as one man and one woman. …I urge you today to encourage your family, friends, and communities to uphold and protect the definition of marriage. God, who created us and put us in the wombs of our mothers, uniting the seed of our fathers and the fruit of our mothers, imprinted us with His dream for marriage. We cannot let a few misguided judges and politicians erase the truth." Amen. Thank you for what you've made possible. I'm truly grateful and humbled by the outpouring of prayers and emails. God bless you, and please pray for the efforts of all of us standing up for God's truth about marriage. Until next week, keep fighting the good fight. |
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Faithfully, |
