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Posted on 02/20/2004 11:42:09 PM PST by Happy2BMe
Feb 21, 12:12 AM (ET)
By BETH FOUHY
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BURLINGAME, Calif. (AP) - After a judge Friday declined to put an immediate end to same-sex marriages in San Francisco, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered California's attorney general Friday to "take immediate steps" to get a court ruling to make the city stop.
Schwarzenegger's directive to Attorney General Bill Lockyer was prompted in part by the judge's decision not to impose a temporary restraining order that would have halted San Francisco's weeklong parade of 3,175 same-sex weddings, said Rob Stutzman, Schwarzenegger's communications director.
"Our civilized society and legal system is based upon a respect for and adherence to the rule of law," Schwarzenegger wrote in a letter to Lockyer. "The City and County of San Francisco's unfortunate choice to disregard state law and grant marriage certificates to gay couples directly undermines this fundamental guarantee."
The Republican governor "feels that we've come to a point where we're starting down a dangerous path and it leads to anarchy at some point," Stutzman said. "It's time for this to end."
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Judge Ronald Evans Quidachay denied the Campaign for California Families' request for a temporary restraining order Friday, saying conservative groups failed to prove same-sex weddings would cause irreparable harm. In a separate case, another judge declined to order an immediate stop to the marriages Tuesday.
The conservative group argued that the weddings harmed all the Californians who voted in 2000 for Proposition 22, which defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
The judge suggested that the rights of the gay and lesbian couples appeared to be more substantial.
"If the court has to weigh rights here, on the one hand you are talking about voting rights, and on the other you are talking about equal rights," Quidachay said.
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Peter Ragone, spokesman for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, scoffed at Schwarzenegger's directive.
"The truth is, thousands of people are involved in loving relationships and having them recognized for the first time," Ragone said. "We urge the governor to meet with some of the couples because what's happening is both lawful and loving."
Mathew Staver, a lawyer representing the Campaign for California Families, said he believes the court ultimately will find that Newsom acted illegally when he began allowing gay marriages last week.
"He can't decide to grant same-sex marriage licenses any more than he can declare war against a foreign country," Staver said.
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"Both judges really recognized there is nobody who is hurt by allowing gay people to marry," Stewart said.
Newsom remained defiant before the ruling, officiating at the wedding of one of California's most prominent lesbian politicians inside his offices at City Hall.
A crowd of politicians and lawyers celebrated that wedding as other gays and lesbians prepared to join the more than 3,000 same-sex couples allowed to marry so far.
About 25 anti-gay-marriage protesters later blocked the door of the county clerk's office, lying down in front of the line and singing religious songs. Gays and lesbians responded by belting out "The Star-Spangled Banner" until sheriff's deputies escorted the protesters out. No arrests were made.
Most Americans remain opposed to same-sex marriages. A poll out Friday indicated that 50 percent of Californians remain opposed, but that sympathy for allowing gays and lesbians to marry has risen by 6 percentage points over the last four years, to 44 percent.
In the San Francisco Bay area, 58 percent of all respondents support gay marriage, according to the Public Policy Institute of California poll, which was based on a statewide survey taken Feb. 8-16 and has a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
While defending its new marriage policy in court, the city also is suing the state, challenging its gay-marriage ban. The city contends the ban violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.
One of those old & little-used words which ought to be used more often.
Make no mistake about it, this Gay Marriage imbroglio is a dagger aimed at the heart of middle America, the traditional family, and the central set of beliefs that hold this country together.
It should have died aborning when it was first raised, laughed at, ignored, and ridiculed into extinction- but it wasn't, and now we are saddled with its ugly fallout.
We are letting a small but noxious pressure group
( my personal estimate of the gay population? 1-3%... )
dictate a policy which, if it goes through, will utterly corrupt the basis of families.
And once that is accomplished, they will not be satisfied, and will "move on" to some new and imagined grievance.
If a "loving relationship" is the basis of the argument then "marriage" will have to be granted to pedophiles and incestuous lovers. Not to mention livestock. Pro Stock too. There are a lot of people who have very loving relationships with their cars.
I was actually not aware of that statistic- thanks for calling it to my attention.
My own estimate is based purely on empirical, personal obsrvation- like many people my age, I rather blindly accepted Kinsey's 10% figure until I grew up and started drawing conclusions from real-world experience... and I noticed that out of every group of a hundred people I ran into, maybe 2 to 5 were gay, rather than the one in ten Kinsey's now-admittedly bogus studies suggested.
You're right! The LAW is highly DISCRIMINATORY. If I love my goat I should be able to marry my goat. Where does the goobermint get off defining my love life?
Wish cartoonistx could get a job at the AJC. I'm absolutely sick of Mick Luckovich's hateful, Bush-bashing cartoons.
...or, how about if a NAMBLA member shows up with 4 or 5 little boys and fills out an application to get married. He'd fit right in wit the other sodomites.
It doesn't really matter how small a fraction of the population they are. The entire left has adopted them as pets.
You get the picture. Force those perverts to announce "Our chosen perversion is normal and fine, but YOUR perversion is beyond the pale!"
You laugh, but whether you know it or not, you have hit upon the national queer strategy (the timing for the completeness of it just has not arrived - it's a "gradual" invasion effect, similar to the withering away of our border with Mexico). Let's take a look for a second at the ultimate goal of queers .
Look at the fact that they want licensing not just for single (queer marriages) - but multiple partner queer (marriages).
Now we should discuss the ultimate goal of queers in America: A Queer PRESIDENT.
Outlandish, you say? Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Had Al Gore won the White House in 2000, many more queer officials, judges, magistrates, etc. would have been plugged into high offices across the land.
Do we see a pattern developing here?
It heavily infests both major political parties.
Consider Rome. Queerdom had reached it's zenith in the queer Roman Caesar Nero who relished in the open mutilation of Christians in the ampitheater and demonically laughed as Rome burned.
Consider Greece. Blazingly queer towards the last of it's zenith. Grecian queers would hold mammoth "sporting" events completely naked - so as to admire the "beauty" of the male body.
Do we see parallels developing between these fallen civilizations and America here?
Historical record proves that homosexuality is one of the few great cancers able to destroy a nation - even more powerful than the greatest military might.
History is repeating itself right before our eyes. And to the "sky is falling crowd" I say compare tolerance towards the events ongoing in S.F. and in every state in the Union to just ten years ago.
Homosexuality is just another scourge eating away at the foundation of this once great nation and beacon every bit as much as the raping of our sovereignty by losing our border controls with Mexico and Canada.
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