Dear Marriage Supporter,
Today, the US Supreme Court did what many of us hoped would never happen — they have invalidated Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act and refused to consider the lower court decision invalidating Proposition 8.
But make no mistake, we avoided a Roe v. Wade for marriage and for that we should be grateful!
That said, I am furious about what the Court has done. We at NOM and tens of millions of other Americans will never accept it. It's wrong, plain and simple. There's a stench to these decisions that has stained the Supreme Court.
Will you show your outrage at the Court and make a special contribution to allow NOM to coalesce Americans behind a national movement to preserve marriage? Please make an urgent, emergency financial contribution to our Win More States fund — today. The work that NOM does has never been more urgently needed than it is right now, and we are totally dependent on you, our faithful supporters, to help us continue the fight.
In my view, the worse of the two decisions is the Proposition 8 case. For six long years, NOM and our allies have fought with everything we had to preserve what God Himself created — marriage, the foundation of society itself. NOM was the largest contributor to putting Proposition 8 on the ballot. I personally uprooted my family and lived for several months in California to help campaign for its successful passage. And we've contributed several hundred thousand dollars to help preserve it through many legal challenges.
I've got a message for the Supreme Court: We're not going to take their wrong decisions sitting down. The decision refusing to hear the Proposition 8 appeal has rewarded the utter dereliction of duty by California's Governor and Attorney General, whose legal obligation was to defend initiatives adopted by the people. That leaves in place the erroneous decision of a single San Francisco federal court judge, who made an illegitimate attempt to legislate from the bench.
Will you join us in expressing your outrage? Please make an emergency contribution right now so that we can immediately launch a nationwide grassroots effort to protest the decisions, and preserve marriage in the 38 states that have laws in place defending marriage.
Back to what happened today: the Supreme Court chose to reward corrupt public officials and judges and disrespect the right of the people of California to define marriage in the way that marriage has actually existed throughout human history — the union of one man and one woman.
First off, over 7 million Californians voted in favor of Proposition 8. It was the second time that California voters had decided to preserve the institution of marriage as between one man and one woman.
Not content to let voters have their say, gay marriage activists from Hollywood and New York hired celebrity lawyers Ted Olsen and David Boies to sue and the case now known as Hollingsworth v. Perry began. Frankly, I've never seen such corruption in the judicial system as I have seen in this case. First, a homosexual judge in a long-term gay relationship was assigned the case, and refused to disclose his relationship before declaring that marriage is unconstitutional. Then we had to turn to the most liberal appeals court in the nation, the Ninth Circuit, whose senior judge — Stephen Reinhardt — agreed that marriage must be redefined. Reinhardt wrote the appeals court opinion invalidating Proposition 8, despite the fact that his own wife advised the lawyers challenging the initiative. Incredibly, Reinhardt, like the corrupt trial judge, refused to remove himself over his conflict of interest.
To make matters worse, the elected officials responsible for defending the vote of the people and who swore an oath to do so — Arnold Schwarzenegger, then — Attorney General (now Governor) Jerry Brown, and current Attorney General Kamala Harris — abandoned their duty and left marriage defenseless. And all the evidence suggests they will continue in this vein unless we fight back.
The Supreme Court then rewarded this cronyism and corruption by effectively giving negligent public officials a pocket veto over ballot measures they don't like. All they have to do now thanks to the Supreme Court is refuse to defend a law passed by the people, and it will crash and burn in the courts.
It's an outrage. But I am not going to sit by and take it without fighting back.
Will you join with me now to continue to fight for marriage? Let's organize millions of American who believe in the truth of marriage as given us by the Creator, and go make sure that no other state loses its protections for marriage. It's wrong that California voters lost their right to defend true marriage (for now), but it has to stop with this decision.
The US Supreme Court has taken pains to limit the impact of their decision to California by basing their ruling on a narrow legal issue. It does not apply to anyone else except the two same-sex couples named in the lawsuit — at least for now.
In that regard, we owe a big debt of gratitude to those defending Proposition 8, especially Chuck Cooper and his firm, along with the attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom, and Andy Pugno of the Prop 8 Legal Defense Fund. They succeeded in convincing the Court NOT to find a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, as celebrity lawyers David Boies and Ted Olsen had been urging throughout the case and promised to do. For that, we are grateful.
But you can bet that gay marriage activists and their rapacious lawyers won't let it rest at that. And that brings me to the DOMA ruling.
In a separate case the Court invalidated Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The ruling will force the federal government to recognize same-sex relationships as "marriages" in the few deep-blue states that have bought into the lie and rejected thousands of years of history and common sense. And it will create chaos as same-sex couples move to other states that have held true, and demand the same recognition from and in those states. The Supreme Court clearly got that case wrong, but the ruling is not nearly as important as the Prop 8 ruling for the future of our cause.
Still, it will further burden taxpayers by forcing them to subsidize gay couples whose relationships do not meet the historic understanding of marriages or provide the benefits to society that flow from the traditional understanding of marriage. That said, the impact is limited only to certain federal benefits and does not require any state to accept gay 'marriages' performed elsewhere. That section of DOMA was not challenged and remains fully in effect — for now. You can count on the powerful gay marriage lobby to mount a full frontal assault in Congress to try to repeal every element of DOMA. We will need your financial help to make sure that Congress continues to protect the right of states to reject having to recognize faux marriage.
We will have more on the Supreme Court rulings in the coming days. Our extraordinary chairman, Prof. John Eastman, will shortly be writing a series of articles to break down the Supreme Court decisions. A former Supreme Court clerk, law school dean and one of the nation's foremost constitutional scholars, Prof. Eastman will provide valuable insights and commentary on what the various justices had to say, and what it portends for the future. We will be sure that you are among the first to receive his insights.
This much we already know: marriage is hanging by a thread in America. It suffered a setback today at the Supreme Court, and those responsible for these attacks will be coming after every remaining state that refuses to abandon the truth of marriage. We must have their back. We must go on offense.
Our opponents are going to be more determined than ever after today. We need to match their determination, and resolve to never again let this type of thing happen to any other state or jurisdiction in our beloved country.
If you believe in the truth of marriage, now is the time to stand up. The survival of true marriage depends on us.
For my part, I am undaunted and resolute.
It was outrageous for the Supreme Court to invalidate Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and allow the potential invalidation of California’s Proposition 8, a law passed with the support of more than 7 million voters. Although Wednesday was a sad day for democracy and for marriage, this is not the end of the battle.
"... It was in the less explosive, but still volatile Windsor case that the Court reached the merits, but only after considerable wrangling here too about whether DOMA could be defended in federal court by counsel retained by the House of Representatives, after the Obama administration withdrew from a legal defense of the act in court. (What is it about the cause of same-sex marriage that prompts so many of its advocates in the political class to abdicate the most elementary responsibilities enjoined by their oaths of office?) Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas would have held that in Windsor too there was no case for the Court to decide, and were thus willing to see DOMA’s challenged Section 3, enacting a federal-law definition of marriage, fall prey to an interbranch political struggle in which the president has the upper hand over Congress.
After today’s rulings by the Supreme Court, every American has a larger stake in the outcome of the marriage debate. No one can afford to stay out of this issue because these decisions today constitute a huge threat to our democratic process.
"To judge from most of the media coverage, today’s Supreme Court decisions in the marriage cases were supposed to give us a final answer on whether the U.S. Constitution requires the states to redefine marriage. They did not.
