Prop 8 Briefs: Court Fight Shows Rift Among Ban Backers
The Bay Area Reporter Online
by Seth Hemmelgarn
July 24, 2008
The California Supreme Court's decision July 16 that will keep
Proposition 8 on the November ballot nonetheless highlighted acrimony among
supporters of the gay marriage ban.
Campaign for California Families; Randy Thomasson, the group's executive
director; and former Republican Assemblyman Larry Bowler had asked to be
involved in the lawsuit over whether the measure should be kept on the November
ballot. But the court denied the request, along with the attempt to keep Prop 8
off the ballot that opponents had sought.
A brief filed on their behalf argued that they had "direct and immediate
interests" that were "not adequately represented by the parties to the action."
That would mean ProtectMarriage.com, one of the main groups backing Prop 8.
The brief said the parties had been longtime proponents of a marriage
amendment to the state's constitution. Recently, they had tried to get the
Voters' Right to Protect Marriage initiative, which would have banned same-sex
marriages and prevented giving the statutory rights of marriage, such as
domestic partnerships, to unmarried individuals, on the November ballot, but
that attempt failed when the initiative didn't get enough signatures to qualify.
In response, attorney Andrew Pugno filed a brief that stated the other
parties weren't really proponents of the initiative, they had no direct legal
interest in the case, and they had actually campaigned against efforts to get
what is now known as Prop 8 on the ballot.
The brief quoted from a lengthy August 2005 letter with Thomasson and
Bowler's names on it that railed against ProtectMarriage's proposed amendment,
calling it "hastily and poorly drafted."
Prop 8 spokeswoman Jennifer Kerns wrote in an e-mail to the Bay Area Reporter
that "CCF is a fringe group that does not represent the views of Proposition 8.
Unlike our proponents, their group seeks to deny the rights of Californians who
seek civil unions and other rights that are already afforded to individuals by
California companies. We seek to uphold the traditional definition of marriage
as between a man and a woman."
A call to CCF wasn't immediately returned.
Group urges Census Bureau to change its ways
People for the American Way has started an online petition calling on the
U.S. Census Bureau not to edit data on same-sex couples in 2010 so that they are
counted as unmarried partners, as the bureau did in the 2000 census.
Judith E. Schaeffer, People for the American Way's legal director, said about
11,000 people have signed the petition since it started July 18.
"I hope [the bureau] will come to their senses and recognize their job is to
provide an accurate count and not to engage in politics and discrimination,"
Schaeffer said.
In a statement to the B.A.R., a Census Bureau spokesman wrote, "The U.S.
Census Bureau procedures used to count and tabulate relationship data are guided
by and comply with legal requirements of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 ...
which requires all federal agencies to recognize only opposite-sex marriages for
the purposes of administering federal programs. Many of these programs rely on
Census Bureau statistics."
Gary Gates, who has consulted with the bureau on the issue and is a senior
research fellow at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public
Policy at the UCLA School of Law, said, "This is not a change to the actual
census form or anything, this is a change to post-data processing. So while I
think no change, no matter how minor, happens quickly or easily ... it's
entirely possible this could be remedied between now and the census." He said
the bureau could at least publish counts of same-sex married couples, since that
wouldn't necessarily mean recognizing same-sex marriages in a legal sense.
