Here is a great excerpt from Ted Olson, as reported by Rex Wockner, closing the case in California to have the anti-gay marriage Prop 8 referendum outlawed because it is unconsitutional to take away marriage rights. This is classy and clever and brave for a conservative to argue …
“The fundamental constitutional right to marry has been taken away from the plaintiffs and tens of thousands of similarly situated Californians,” Olson said. “Their state has rewritten its constitution in order to place them into a special disfavored category where their most intimate personal relationships are not valid, not recognized and second-rate. Their state has stigmatized them as unworthy of marriage, different and less respected. … There is not a compelling governmental interest to put the plaintiffs in a class like this and take away what the Supreme Court has called a fundamental right, a right of liberty, privacy, association, intimacy and autonomy.”
“This law is discriminatory,” he said. “The evidence is overwhelming that it imposes great social harm on individuals who are our equals. They are members of our society. They pay their taxes. They want to form a household. They want to raise their children in happiness and in the same way that their neighbors do. We are imposing great damage on them by the … state of California saying they are different and they cannot have the happiness, they cannot have the privacy, they cannot have the liberty, they cannot have the intimate association in the context of a marriage that the rest of our citizens do. We have demonstrated during this trial that that causes grave and permanent, irreparable and totally unnecessary harm, because we are withholding from them … that right of marriage in the context of the intimate relationship. We are withholding that from them, hurting them and we are doing no good. If we had a reason, a really good reason for inflicting all of that harm, that might be another matter, but there is no reason.”
Tags: Prop 8, Proposition 8, Rex Wockner, Ted Olson
