The Arc Of Justice Has Curved Through Michigan

So did every kid wish their parent's marriage was a little more gay and they took advantage of the 'complimentary' roles by playing one parent off against the other.

Federal Judge Bernard Friedman issued a ruling which struck down Michigan's constitutional ban on gay marriage.  Unlike other Federal judges, Friedman made his decision after allowing for a jury trial.  I followed the day to day doings and often found myself laughing or just stunned with the testimony on behalf of the State.  The testimony of Mark Regnerus was especially humorous, but the take down of his position by other witnesses was even better.  I'll have more on that later, but first the following is the full editorial from this morning's Detroit Free Press.  It's well worth reading.

Editorial: A victory for marriage and children of Michigan

By The Detroit Free Press Editorial Board - 3/21/2014  

Marriage had always commanded the law’s reverence and protection. Now, in a ruling that breathes new vitality into that venerable institution, U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman has struck down the discriminatory Michigan law that excluded thousands of same-sex couples and their families from the advantages of wedlock.Friedman’s carefully reasoned decision is a victory not just for plaintiffs April DeBoer, Jayne Rowse and their three adopted children, but for thousands of other Michigan children, including those currently languishing in foster care. Experts called by the plaintiffs testified that same-sex couples are disproportionately likely to adopt such hard-to-place children, and Friday’s ruling will make it easier for them to do so. (Pope John Paul I argued for gay adoption in Italy back in the mid 60's precisely for this reason.)

The ruling is also a humiliating defeat for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who squandered hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars to mount a pathetic legal defense that demeaned his office and disserved his constituents. He would be well advised not to compound his bad judgment by appealing Friedman’s decision. (Pathetic is actually a generous description of a defense that even included the 'expert' testimony that gays are going to hell.)

This newspaper opposed the state constitutional amendment that barred legal recognition of same-sex marriages before voters enacted it in 2004, and we have remained skeptical of the suggestion that it promotes any legitimate public interest. Judge Friedman’s carefully reasoned opinion makes it clear that our skepticism was well-founded.

Friedman’s ruling makes short work of the state’s specious arguments that the same-sex ban was calculated to “promote responsible procreation” or assure that Michigan children are raised in an “ideal family structure” headed “by two biological parents.” The judge noted that Michigan has never withheld legal recognition from opposite-sex couples who were unable or unwilling to conceive, and said, “The overwhelming weight of the scientific evidence” contradicted the state’s assertion that children raised by heterosexual couples fared better than those raised by same-sex couples.”
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The real threat to such children was a discriminatory marriage ban that “undermines the very aim ... of civil marriage, namely, family stability.”

Friedman did not even address the state’s contention that allowing same-sex couples to marry would “dilute the public socialization of young people into a marriage culture” or “send a message to women that they have no significant place in family life.” (Yes, the State did argue that gay marriage would send the message that women have no significant place in family life.  This in a trial about the adoptive rights of two lesbians no less.)

Ironically, DeBoer and Rowse never set out to challenge Michigan’s dubious grounds for prohibiting their marriage; they sought merely to secure their family’s future by cross adopting the special-needs children they have been raising together for years.

But Michigan law permits only married couples or single people to adopt, a policy to which Friedman recognized no obvious constitutional objection. The real obstacle to the joint adoptions that DeBoer and her partner sought, he reasoned, was the same-sex marriage ban that barred them from obtaining the credentials required of adoptive parents.

At the judge’s suggestion, the plaintiffs amended their lawsuit, transforming their challenge of Michigan’s adoption law into a frontal assault on the Michigan Marriage Act (MMA) that voters adopted in 2004.
The state’s argument that the MMA was a designed to further the best interest of Michigan’s children was a loser from the get-go. Even the attorney general had to concede that DeBoer and Rowse’s children had flourished under the couple’s care. A series of experts called by the plaintiffs testified that a deluge of research established that children raised by same-sex couples fared just as well across a broad series of metrics as those of similarly situated opposite-sex parents. Friedman said he found their testimony “highly credible” and “entitled to great weight.”

Whatever personal objections he may have to same-sex marriage, Schuette should have recognized that the constitutionality of Michigan’s 2004 ban was on shaky ground after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act last year. The Windsor ruling prompted attorneys general in many states to abandon their defense of bans like Michigan’s, and Schuette might have saved a lot of time and taxpayer dollars by following their lead.

Instead, Michigan’s messianic attorney general pressed on. Schuette insisted that he was only defending the democratic prerogative of Michigan voters. But that was a political slogan, not a legal argument, and Schuette’s courtroom defense of the same-sex ban was paltry grab-bag of junk science and religious chauvinism.

The first of the so-called experts that the state summoned to defend the marriage ban was disqualified outright; the second was publicly censured by his academic peers, and the third memorably ended his testimony by opining that unrepentant gays and lesbians were doomed to burn in hell.

In his ruling, Friedman dismissed the state’s experts as “unbelievable” representatives of “a fringe viewpoint that is rejected by their colleagues across a variety of social science fields.”

The attorney general has yet to disclose the tab for this parade of incompetents, but it represents only a portion of what taxpayers will ultimately for his Pyrrhic legal crusade; inevitably the state will be ordered to pay a substantial share of the victorious plaintiffs’ costs, too.

Schuette’s ideological proclivities dictate that he will appeal Friday’s ruling to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. But the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final word, and the extensive record created in the DeBoer case has provided new evidence that bans such as Michigan’s cannot be squared with constitutional principles of equal protection and due process. (This is precisely why Judge Friedman insisted on a trial, to get the point across that gay marriage bans are not grounded in legal reasoning, but in emotional and religious arguments.)

We have no doubt that, before the current decade is out, most Michiganders will regard their state’s legacy of discrimination against same-sex couples as an indefensible lapse of decency. Gay or straight, they can be grateful for a federal judiciary that stands ready to defend the dignity and liberty to which every citizen is entitled.

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I'm not going to rehash all the testimony in this trial.  Judge Friedman pretty much stated the only conclusion a rational person could draw about the State's experts:  "unbelievable" representatives of a fringe viewpoint that is rejected by their colleagues across a variety of social science fields".  Mark Regnerus irritates me personally because he has utterly compromised the whole notion of objective scientific study.  It galls me that he is getting paid as an expert witness in these kinds of cases through the use of tax payer money.  It also galls me that he took 700,000 from the Witherspoon foundation, a right wing religious think tank, and then lied about this at the same time he is caught asking the Heritage Foundation what they 'expect' from his study.  This is sadly reminiscent of the kind of research bought and paid for by the tobacco companies.  It is nothing less than scientific prostitution.  Unfortunately, Regnerus being the conservative Catholic he is, is also one of those conservatives who doesn't truly believe rules of engagement apply to him personally when he is on a crusade.  The end justifies the means.   Unfortunately for Regnerus and his other fellow 'experts',  in this case their means most certainly justified this end. 

Michigan's Tea Party Attorney General has asked for a stay on this ruling, which he will undoubtedly get based on the similar Utah decision which was stayed by the Supreme Court itself.  I agree wholeheartedly that gay marriage needs to go to the Supreme Court and be decided once and for all.  It's not equal justice for a gay couple,  if in having to move from one State to another,  their marriages or adoptions are nullified by having to do so. There is also the additional fact that many special needs kids are in foster care that could be in stable families if gays could adopt.  The idea that keeping these kids from being adopted by gay couples who would provide for them is somehow protecting these kids from a less than optimum environment can only be seriously believed by people who are totally unfamiliar with the foster care system.  In the foster care system the 'parents' are paid for taking these children.  In most cases foster care parents do a wonderful job in difficult circumstances, but in others, these children are commodities and pay the price for that status.

Of course the Catholic bishops of Michigan have issued their objections to this ruling in their usually galling form which always includes 'persons with same-sex attraction should not be judged, but rather accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity'.  They never add, 'and given second class status as citizens'.  Here is part of their statement: 

“Today’s decision from federal district court Judge Bernard Friedman to redefine the institution of marriage by declaring Michigan’s Marriage Amendment unconstitutional strikes at the very essence of family, community and human nature. In effect, this decision advances a misunderstanding of marriage, and mistakenly proposes that marriage is an emotional arrangement that can simply be redefined to accommodate the dictates of culture and the wants of adults. Judge Friedman’s ruling that also finds unconstitutional the state’s adoption law is equally of grave concern.

“As this case will likely move forward through the courts, it is necessary to state clearly that persons with same-sex attraction should not be judged, but rather accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity......
......Going forward, we, the Catholic bishops of this state, working through the Michigan Catholic Conference, will collaborate with those who are upholding Michigan’s Marriage Amendment and adoption statute and will assist to the greatest extent possible efforts to appeal Judge Friedman’s most regrettable ruling.”

I feel sorry for Michigan's Catholics, not only will they get to see their tax dollars wasted going forward, they will also get to see their donations wasted in the same effort.  They get double dipped.  I certainly hope those married Michigan Catholics understand that their bishops think may of their marriages are about 'an emotional arrangement and their wants as adults'.  They should at least begin to wonder why their bishops don't object to heterosexual marriages that are childless by choice or infertile because of age issues.

In the meantime the Arc of Justice continues on it's path to the Supreme Court Building in Washington DC and the wind behind it is getting stronger.