Marriage Watch / Maggie Gallagher

What do Olson and Boies think they are doing? Watching accounts of this trial unfold this week  I had a big "aha" moment. It's now clear:    Ted and David think they are conducting the Scopes trial!  

When this trial began I told you: gay marriage activists were putting 7 million Californians on trial.  (Ed Whelan over at National Review has a brilliant series "Judge Walker's Witch Hunt" . . . explaining how intellectually absurd it is to conduct a "trial" into the subjective motivations of 7 million voters, constitutionally speaking.). But this week it got worse:  They are clearly putting Christianity itself on trial.  Why else have an expert read statements of Catholic and Southern Baptist doctrines into the record?

And why put a Stanford Prof. named Gary Segura on the stand to testify ""religion is the chief obstacle for gays' and lesbians' political progress."

Could the zero-sum nature of the game be any clear?  Rights for gays and lesbians, in their minds, depends on invalidating the voting rights of religious people when it comes to gay marriage, because their votes are influenced by their religion--i.e. bigotry.  

Here's their brilliant legal strategy: Ted and David want  the Supreme Court to rule that Catholicism and Southern Baptism and related Christian denominations are bigotry.  

(That's why their next move is to subpoena --i.e. drag into court against their will--two San Diego Christian pastors who emerged as leaders in the Prop 8 fight, Pastor Jim Garlow and Pastor Miles MacPherson.  Why should participating in democracy give somebody a right to drag you to Sacramento to court?)  

I know many  gay people do not agree with this anti-religion strategy. And I also know  many gay rights activists  are getting increasingly worried about the legal strategy and tactics employed by these two  legal eagles may backfire.  (See the Jan. 17 Los Angeles Times story, "Gay Marriage Supporters fear Supreme Court's Ruling was an Omen," and also Dale Carpenter's comment about the "bad start" for pro-gay marriage advocates.)

Ted Olson and David Boies think they can persuade the Supreme Court that Science with a capital "S" proves the voters are wrong about the natural family.  Then they want to pit Science with a capital "S" against "Big Religion," 

I bet Ted and David lay awake late at night think "Hey!, maybe someday someone will make a movie about us!"

Oh wait, somebody is.

Frustrated by the fact that Supreme Court intervened to block the televising of this trial, according to the gay press one gay marriage advocate is planning to film daily "re-enactments" of the trial, based on anti-Prop 8 bloggers accounts, and post them on you tube.  No, I am not making that up.