“I think the governor of California and the attorney general today have to defend the Constitution and have to enable the judicial process to go along … and an appeal to go through. So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court.”
~Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Meg Whitman
If the self-financed Republican candidate for Governor of California (who apparently had never bother to registering as a voter/voting before 2002) had her way, the state in the worse financial shape in the country would spend money defending Prop 8. How many teachers salaries could the state pay for with the money the state would spend defending Prop 8; how much infrastructure could be paid for with the money the state would spend defending Prop 9; how many state workers would have their mandatory three furlough days off a month reduced with the money the state would spend defending Prop 8…Meg Whitman doesn’t care. She believes California should spend its extremely short resources defending Prop 8.
From the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Meg Whitman says state should defend Prop. 8:
GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman – trying to tamp down opposition from conservatives who say she is undermining them – criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown on Friday for not defending California’s same sex-marriage ban, now before a federal appeals court.
Whitman’s first definitive statements on how she would handle the issue as governor came hours before she spoke at the opening of the three-day state GOP convention in San Diego, where she is facing open hostility from conservatives over her positions on illegal immigration and climate change.
From the Sacramento Bee‘s Meg Whitman says she would defend Proposition 8:
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman said Friday that she would defend voter-approved Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex marriage, if she becomes governor next year.
The announcement, made just hours before she addressed the California Republican Party convention here, put the Republican candidate at odds with both Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown, Whitman’s Democratic rival in the governor’s race. Both Schwarzenegger and Brown have refused to defend the law against court challenges.
…When asked by The Bee, however, during a campaign stop Friday whether she’d defend Proposition 8, she said, “The issue right now is, as I understand it, is ‘Will Proposition 8 have the appropriate support to actually make an appeal to the Circuit Court of Appeals?’
“And I think the governor, the attorney general today has to defend the constitution and has to enable the judicial process to go along and has to enable an appeal to go through,” she continued. “So if I was governor, I would give that ruling standing to be able to appeal to the circuit court.”
So to shore up her position with social conservatives, she takes a stance that’s fiscally unsound. Nice.
As a Calfornian who is concerned about how broke the state is, if me must see Prop 8 defended let’s let the state “outsource” defense of Prop 8 to the Alliance Defense Fund — at the Alliance Defense Fund’s expense.
Hey, one can make the reasoned, fiscally conservative argument that letting the private sector handle this appeal would save the state a whole lot lot of cash the state just doesn’t have. One doesn’t even have to be a fan of freedom, equality, and justice for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people to find fault with Meg Whitman’s stance on the appeal of Prop 8 — Just from a fiscal perspective, California just can’t afford the millions of dollars it would take to defend Prop 8.
So again, if Prop 8 is to be defended through the Appeals process, let the conservative Christians and Mormons who financed Prop 8 now fund the initiative’s defense via their leaders’ chosen legal team — the Alliance Defence Fund. It’s the fiscally conservative thing for California to do.
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