Mormon Church Abused Tax Status with Anti-Gay Campaign, New Docs May Prove

Towards the end of the exhausting battle over California’s anti-gay marriage initiative Proposition 8 in 2008,documents came to light suggesting the Utah-based Church of Latter Day Saints abused and exceeded the limits of their tax-exempt status. The documents showed that the Mormon Church had been calculating a California referendum as early as 1997. But now, in preparation for a challenge to the church’s status with the IRS, gay activist Fred Karger (pictured)—former candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination—is revealing a document-based smoking gun showing the referendum the Mormons were actually shooting for was California’s Proposition 22 in 2000.

Karger went public with a batch of the leaked documents at a news conference in Salt Lake City in February 2009, calling the church’s secret political machinations “Mormongate” and challenging the church’s claim that it fully disclosed its financial involvement in the Prop. 8 campaign. After all, LDS spokesperson Don Eaton told KGO-TV in San Francisco, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put zero money in this.” 

LDS spokesperson Michael Otterson concurred, showing (Mormon-owned) KSL TV a copy of a filing indicating $190,000 worth of “in kind” contributions but no actual cash donations. Otterson called Karger’s news conference “grandstanding” and a “publicity stunt” that “confuses” the conversation about traditional marriage, KSL reported.

In June 2010, however, the California Fair Political Practices Commission found the church guilty on 13 counts of late campaign reporting connected to Prop. 8 and reached an agreement whereby the church admitted to spending $2,078 in an amended filing and had to pay $5,538 in fines. Some have estimated that the church raised $30 million from Mormon families for the Prop. 8 fight, along with “in kind” services such as phone banking, direct mail and more.

But, as the leaked documents show, the church learned how to raise and hide money in the run-up to successfully passing Prop. 22, which became a blueprint for other anti-gay marriage initiative battles.

Church spokesperson Scott Trotter would not say whether the documents were real, valid or leaked. “We are unconcerned about these documents,” Trotter told the Salt Lake City Tribune in March 2009. “The church’s position on the importance of traditional marriage has been consistent over the years.”

The church has not yet responded to a recent request for comment from Frontiers. (Update: a Church spokesperson did call back but well after the story was filed.)

Karger says the new documents are even “juicier” than the ones he released over Prop. 8, showing a highly adept, political organization within the church’s complicated, authoritarian hierarchy and vast business holdings. Karger contends the documents prove the Mormons exceeded the percentage of time and money allowed by the IRS for a nonprofit such as a religious organization to participate in politics.

“These documents show how the Mormon Church is such a political machine that they singlehandedly wrote and orchestrated this initiative,” says Karger. “Prop. 22— they made it happen. And that’s what’s so revealing. I was aghast at how much influence they had.”

In 1996, the California Family Code already limited civil marriage between a man and a woman, but anti-gay conservative Republican Sen. Pete Knight of Palmdale proposed legislation to close a “loophole” permitting recognition of gay marriages from other states, such as Hawaii, where the issue was hotly working its way through the courts.

As early as Aug. 20, 1996—a month before President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act—ElderLoren C. Dunn took a lead on the marriage issue as President of the North American West Area and as a new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in the LDS hierarchy. He wrote a memo, “Re: Status Update on California HLM [Homosexual Legal Marriage] Legislation,” on Church stationary to Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a member of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy.

“If the legislation dies on the floor of the California Senate, one alternative would be to organize an initiative to bring the issue before the people of California in a general election,” Dunn writes. “Judging from past initiatives, it would take about $1 million to get the necessary signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and another $2-3 million to help insure its passage.”

READ MORE!

Maggie Gallagher's reliable sleight of hand

It was a few months after she helped pass the discriminatory Proposition 8, roll back equality in California, and write marriage discrimination into the Golden State's constitution that I first heard Maggie Gallagher go on in length about how she was the supposed victim of the same-sex marriage fight. "They're going to call us bigots," was the gist of her fearful claim. Listen to that speech here; and a response to it here.

What struck me at the time, and what continued to strike me in the subsequent years in which she and her movement adopted this "victims" meme writ large, was the way Maggie stripped the concept of merit (or lack thereof) out of the situation altogether. Not only would she pretend that hers was simply a cause to "protect marriage," the purposely installed defense system behind which anti-equality conservatives have long been hiding, but she would also fully exclude the very real pain and practical repercussions that citizens who are in, or who might someday want to be in, a same-sex civil marriage experience as direct result of her chosen line of work. It was always as if she was simply selling daisies on the side of the road, and those of us who challenge Maggie's cause were simply out to get her. It was like we had nothing better to do with our time so we thought we'd just go after this "innocent" writer and her views.

Fast forward to the year 2014, and we find the same Maggie, surely battle weary and possibly even regretful over the failing strategy that she very much helped develop, yet still woefully (and I suspect deliberately) obtuse when it comes to what her work has actually wrought. She lays this out in a new piece for National Review Online, where she argues that "the left" has essentially played dirty on the issue of marriage and is now applying that to other fights. Here's a pertinent snip:

The recent flaying of Brendan Eich for the sin of donating to Prop 8 was only the visible wedge of a far larger mechanism at work. At a seminar in Washington, a young left-leaning member of a usually conservative religious denomination challenged me on this point: “Doesn’t it show that executives shouldn’t donate to controversial issues?” she asked.

Don’t kid yourself, young lady; the business owners who donated against Prop 8 faced no such effective retaliation for their private and personal donations. Right now, the stigma game is one-way, directed by those who have power and know how to use it against traditionalist communities they hate. (No doubt, if cultural conservatives had more power like that, they would use it in ways that would outrage liberals — I am not making a moral point here, just pointing out the mechanics as truthfully as I can.) 

FULL: Organizing Groupthink // The Left applies lessons learned from gay-marriage victories to the next war. [NRO]

Business owners who donated against Prop 8 didn't face retaliation? Well no, obviously not. That's because equality is a good thing. Fairness is a virtue. Despite the pro-discrimination crowd's willfully misleading framing, this marriage fight is not a two-sided conversation with equally-merited positions. Opting to discriminate against your fellow citizen, especially in a fight that is almost exclusively in place because of people who want to overextend their religious convictions, is a really bad choice.

Prop 8 supporters have never had reason or cause to retaliate against those who fought against the discriminatory measure. There is not one California citizen who opposes marriage equality whose life has been changed in any way by the roller coaster Prop 8 debate. When the state supreme court first brought marriage equality to California, oppositional straight people were just as married as they ever were. When Prop 8 passed that November, none of these oppositional folks were any more married than they were the day before the election. Same goes for the court battle, right up until present day, when equality is now and forever the order of the day in California and the entire west coast. There are surely people in the area who very much wish Prop 8 were still a reality, but while they might be annoyed or even dismayed, their rights are not in any way altered and their lives are not really affected.

This is not true for many of us who opposed Prop 8. Thousands of couples who successfully married before the passage of the ban saw their unions in limbo. Many more couples were denied the opportunity for many years after. Personally, I had my entire wedding planned in California, which my husband and I had to cancel and move to Connecticut after Prop 8 went into effect (our vendors had placed special Prop 8 language into all of the contracts that we signed that summer). And there are countless other stories. Because those of us who are gay, or even those of us who simply love and support LGBT people and equality, had very real rights at stake. And not only rights but an overall peace of mind. It is an uniquely dehumanizing experience to have your civil rights turned into a popularity contest.

I understand why Maggie doesn't want to focus on the very tangible and easily perceptible harms connected to her legacy. Sure, she largely denies that there are any, instead insisting that she has been working for good. However, that narrative is looking flimsier and flimsier. Heck, even NOM, which Maggie co-founded and stewarded, is now admitting that the laws that have long-denied us are, indeed, bans. When this story is told over the next many years and decades and centuries, people are not going to have to be told which side was the aggressor. People know what a ban is. People know what discriminatory rhetoric sounds like. People know what offense and defense looks like.

The lesson Maggie should learn from her own time in the marriage fight is that the script won't change simply because the the wily foe doesn't like the role into which he has been cast. You can't work day in and day out to achieve a certain plot then overlook all the backstory when the first act's downtrodden team becomes the final act's prevailing voice of reason.

Plaintiffs in historic gay marriage case lauded at lavish ceremony

A year after becoming among the first same-sex couples to wed legally in California, two men who were plaintiffs in the case that led to a court overturning the state's five-year ban on gay marriage held a lavish ceremony on Saturday with family and friends including Hollywood stars to celebrate their wedding.

Paul Katami, 41, and Jeff Zarrillo, 40, exchanged vows during a poolside ceremony at the famous Beverly Hilton Hotel, which hosts the annual Golden Globe awards, with more than 100 supporters including three of their four parents, as well as actors Jamie Lee Curtis and Rob Reiner.

"Saying 'I do' changes everything," said Katami. "It gives us the ability to aspire for more, to be respected. We are paying tribute tonight to the people who stood up years ago."

The couple, who have been together for 13 years, were legally wed a year ago at Los Angeles City Hall after the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a federal court's order striking down California's same-sex marriage ban. A federal appellate court panel then lifted an injunction against the marriages.

"We like to say we're a small piece, a chapter in a large book," said Zarrillo. "By no means are we done until there's equality in all states. We still have a lot of work to do."

Several gay stars were on hand, including Guillermo Diaz of television's "Scandal."

"This is something that I feel should've happened a long time ago," Diaz said. "They fought for a right we shouldn't have had to fight for."

Lance Bass, a member of the boy band 'N Sync, attended with his fiance, Michael, and said the couple "had a huge hand in letting us show our love in front of the world."

The ceremony's officiants were David Boies and Ted Olson, lawyers who successfully fought in the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn ballot measure Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage.

"The next step is really to have equality for everyone," said Reiner, one of Hollywood's top directors. "There are currently 70 lawsuits in America," Reiner noted, adding "it's just a matter of time. It's inevitable.

Trailer for HBO’s “The Case Against 8″

Proposition 8, the 2008 California ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage in the state, sparked a five-year legal battle that is recalled in a new HBO Films documentary.

California Poised To Remove Anti-Gay Language From State's Marriage Laws

The California state senate recently approved a bill that would remove language from the state’s Family Code defining marriage as only “between a man and a woman.” The bill (SB1306) would use gender-neutral language calling marriage as “a civil contract between two persons” and also open the door for California to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.

These changes would bring the states laws into accordance with the recent Supreme, federal and state court decisions affirming the right of same-sex couples to wed.

The SF Gate reports:

“In June, the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a lower court judge's order striking down as unconstitutional a ballot measure known as Proposition 8, the 2008 voter initiative that outlawed same-sex marriages in California. A 5-4 court majority ruled that the ban's sponsors lacked authority to defend the measure on appeal, though the justices did not directly address the ban's constitutionality.

Marriages resumed in late June after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a stay it had imposed on the lower court ruling. The state Supreme Court dismissed a final challenge by the ban's backers in August.”

The SF Gate adds that Republican Senator Jim Nielsen was the only Republican to speak against the bill and that in the California Assembly, only Republicans voted against the bill while two Republicans — Anthony Cannella of Ceres and Ted Gaines of Roseville — voted for it.

Prop 8 Supporters Lend Support To Singapore Leader Trying To Criminalize Homosexuality

Jennifer Roback Mors (left) and Pastor Jim Garlow — two spokespeople for California’s Proposition 8 campaign who “remain highly connected to America’s ‘protect marriage’ movement” — have spoken at a Singapore conference whose head is fighting to keep a law criminalizing homosexuality with two years imprisonment.

Jeremy Hooper from Good As You writes:

The head of Love Singapore.org, Pastor Lawrence Khong, is the most vocal anti-gay activist in the nation… Khong wrote:

We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.

Examples from around the world have shown that the repeal of similar laws have led to negative social changes, especially the breakdown of the family as a basic building block and foundation of the society. It takes away the rights of parents over what their children are taught in schools, especially sex education. It attacks religious freedom and eventually denies free speech to those who, because of their moral convictions, uphold a different view from that championed by increasingly aggressive homosexual activists…

Jennifer Roback Morse is the President and Founder of the Ruth Institute, an offshoot of the anti-gay National Organization of Marriage. In the past she has compared gay parenting to slavery, lied to the Rhode Island legislature about the “dangers” of marriage equality and gone on a quixotic one-woman quest to reclaim the rainbow back from the gays.

Jim Garlow, in contrast, once held a “gay marriage summit” at a San Diego megachurch in order to show that pro and anti-marriage proponents can disagree civilly.

'The Case Against 8' Proposition 8 Documentary Gets a Full Trailer

Journalist Lisa Keen called Jo Becker's book Forcing the Spring "hell-bent on making Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin and conservative icon attorney Ted Olson into the white horse heroes of an upcoming Hollywood docu-drama about How the Marriage Equality Movement was Won."

But in fact, there is such a Hollywood docu-drama, and it's called The Case Against 8, which might be seen by some as a companion, or perhaps an alternative, to Becker's controversial and highly-criticized retelling of the events in the Prop 8 case.

In any case, The Case Against 8 won the Documentary Directing Award at Sundance and took home an Audience Award at SXSW. It's opening in limited release in June and airing on HBO on June 23.

AFER paid $6.4 million to Ted Olson and David Boies' Law Firms in Prop 8 Case

The Washington Blade is reporting that the American Foundation for Equal Rights paid more than $6.4 million to the two law firms that successfully argued against California’s Proposition 8.

2009-2013 tax filings indicate former Republican U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson’s law firm – Gibson, Dunn & Crtcher LLP – received nearly $6 million from AFER for “legal and ancillary legal expenses,” while David Boies’ law firm – Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP received $468,089.

The paper reports that these expenses include payments to expert witnesses who testified against Prop 8, travel and living expenses for lawyers who lived in San Francisco for a month during a three-week trial over which now retired U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker presided in 2010, and legal research costs.

“AFER’s case resulted in the return of marriage equality in California for a fraction of the cost of a ballot measure,” AFER Executive Director Adam Umhoefer told the Washington Blade on Tuesday.

Tax filings also indicate AFER raised $14,900,467 between April 23, 2009, and March 31, 2013, that Umhoefer told the Blade includes a “large amount” of contributions from Republican donors. He added his organization estimates the Prop 8 case also generated millions of dollars in earned media coverage for which it did not have to pay.

One such piece of media that's generating quite a bit of buzz is The Case Against 8, the film that goes behind the scenes of the high-profile trial. The film has won multiple awards from film festivals this year, including last week's SXSW in Austin. 

Prop 8 Doc Wins Sundance Prize

The Case Against 8 won the Best Documentary Direction prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

The Case Against 8 / U.S.A. (Directors: Ben Cotner, Ryan White) — A behind-the-scenes look inside the case to overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Shot over five years, the film follows the unlikely team that took the first federal marriage equality lawsuit to the U.S. Supreme Court. Directors say they met at Sundance five years ago and also thank the “incredibly inspiring people we were able to follow around for 5 years.” They also thank HBO and the lawyers who “showed that civil rights know no boundaries.”

The film airs on HBO in June.

Conservative Coalition: Repeal of California Transgender Student Rights Law Will Qualify for Ballot

An anti-LGBT coalition says it has collected enough signatures for a ballot measure that would repeal a new California law protecting transgender students, the AP reports:

A coalition of conservative groups called Privacy for all Students submitted 620,000 signatures to get the initiative on the November 2014 ballot, said Frank Schubert (pictured), the political strategist handling the signature gathering effort. 

To qualify, at least 505,000 valid signatures must be submitted. To verify the signatures, each of California's 58 counties will first check that the overall count is correct, then conduct a random sampling to make sure they are legitimate. After that, it is likely the state would order a full review.

Said Gina Gleason of the group Faith and Public Policy: "Many people said we had no chance to collect over half a million signatures in just 90 days, but we have proven them wrong by gathering over 115,000 more signatures than the minimum needed."

Governor Jerry Brown signed the protections into law in August 2012. They require public schools to allow those students access to whichever restroom and locker room they want.

California Republicans approved a resolution supporting the law's repeal in October 2012.

Mormon Church Pushing For Second Prop 8 In Hawaii

According to Mormon Church doctrine, worthy male members who marry a worthy woman in the Church’s temples are eligible to become gods and kings after the Second Coming. (The women are eligible to become goddesses and queens “unto their husbands.”) These gods and goddesses will be tasked with having numberless children in the afterlife and will form worlds of their own to reign over.

The current battle over marriage equality in Hawaii isn’t the first time the Aloha State has tried to legalize equality. Back in 1998, after the state’s Supreme Court ruled a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, a ballot initiative went directly to the voters who chose to reject the rights of same-sex couples. And just like Hawaii’s 1998 fight—and the 2008 Prop 8 battle in California -— the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon Church) is once again leading the charge against equality.

The Church has used this unique belief of the afterlife as the basis for its opposition to marriage equality. As marriage equality becomes law in a growing number of states, the Mormon Church has asserted that same-sex married couples, being unable to produce children, threaten that familial structure. It doesn’t make any difference that the religion’s ministers and clergy would never be required to perform the ceremonies for gay couples themselves, nor would the Church’s sacred buildings be required to host such functions.

It was against this backdrop that the leaders of the Mormon Church first got involved in the battle against equality in the 1990s. As I detailed in Political Research Associates’ “Resisting the Rainbow” report several years ago, the Mormon Church was acutely aware of its unpopularity among more mainstream Christian communities. Leaked letters between Mormon “apostles” and “prophets” (their highest ranking leaders) revealed a coordinated campaign they had created with the Catholic Church and Evangelicals, where the other faiths would provide a public front, while the Mormons would use their substantial wealth and volunteer abilities in the background. The campaign was an enormous success, overwhelmingly defeating advocates for justice and overriding the Hawaiian Supreme Court’s ruling.

CA Supreme Court Denies San Diego Clerk

In two separate cases, the Prop. 8 Proponents and the San Diego County Clerk are also asking the Court to limit the scope of federal district court decision that found Prop. 8 unconstitutional. Gay and lesbian couples have been able to marry in the state since June 28.

For the second time, the California Supreme Court has denied a request to immediately halt the marriages of gay and lesbian couples in the state.

Their cases have been called “baseless,” “frivolous” and “no chance of succeeding.”

The CA Supreme Court has denied the San Diego County Clerk’s request to halt same-sex marriages. #Prop8
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) July 23, 2013

California Supreme Court denies San Diego clerk's bid to stay gay marriages in #Prop8 case. Strike two.
— Howard Mintz (@hmintz) July 23, 2013

 Today, 24 county clerks also urged the California Supreme Court to continue to allow marriages in all of California’s 58 counties:

The state’s high court has recognized since 2004 that the clerks’ offices that issue marriage licenses “act under the supervision of state officials who are ultimately responsible for the state’s marriage license process,” said a lawyer for 20 elected clerks led by Stephen Vagnini of Monterey County.

I've heard all of the ludicrous talking points and self-victimizing rhetoric, but Frank Schubert's latest take on the Proposition 8 legal case might be the biggest bout of sore-loserdom I'm ever witnessed from an anti-LGBT commentator.

In an article that originated at the Public Discourse (a project of the conservative Witherspoon Institute) and has made its way around the conservative media space, the National Organization For Marriage political director and Prop 8 campaign mastermind stops trying to beat his opponents in the school of thought. Instead, Schubert pushes a new meme claiming that those of us on the right side of history "cheated" people like him. Here's a snippet:

The Cheaters Won
It’s only natural for people to want to know how I feel about the outcome, not only from a policy perspective but also from a personal perspective. After all, I put my heart into managing (and winning) the Prop 8 campaign in 2008, and since then have spent much of my professional career working on preserving marriage throughout the nation.
Here’s how I feel.
I feel like we were cheated. Just like I felt as a kid watching the bad guy put a sleeper hold on his opponent, or hitting him below the belt or with the brass knuckles while the referee had his back turned, so have the legal system and politicians cold-cocked the people of California—seven million of whom went to the polls to lawfully enact Prop 8. Only this time, I realize there’s not likely to be a rematch. The cheaters won.
I feel like the rule of law has been shredded, and conniving politicians have been rewarded for ignoring their sworn oath of office. Public confidence in the judicial system has been dealt a severe blow. Supporters of same-sex “marriage” may be happy with the result today, but hold on until the tables are turned and a conservative governor and attorney general refuse to defend a law they don’t personally support, and there’s nobody left with standing to defend it. The seeds of that action will have been sown by leftist politicians like Brown, Harris, and Schwarzenegger.

San Diego County Clerk Wants To Halt Same-Sex Marriages

Yesterday, San Diego County Clerk Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr. filed a petition seeking to put an end to same-sex marriages in California - at least temporarily.

The LA Times reports: "Ernest J. Dronenburg Jr. argued that the court should halt weddings while it considers the argument that the federal court ruling should apply only to the two couples who sued over Proposition 8, as well as to the county clerks in Alameda and Los Angeles counties, where the couples live."

Dronenburg's office claims the document was filed for the purposes of clarification, saying they want to make "sure to follow the Constitution so there isn’t any confusion."

County Chairman Greg Cox was quick to distance himself from Dronenburg's office saying, "The County Clerk has acted independently on this matter. No one else from the County was consulted or had any part of this court action, including the Board of Supervisors. The County’s position is and always has been that we, the County, will follow applicable law with regards to same-sex marriage."

Also, California Attorney General Kamala Harris immediately issued a brief and stern response which essentially quashes Dronenburg's petition.

"The filing offers no new arguments that could deny same-sex couples their constitutionally protected civil rights. The federal injunction is still in effect, and it requires all 58 counties to perform same-sex marriages. No exceptions."

Read the entire petition here.

California Supreme Court Rejects Prop 8 Backers Request to Halt Gay Marriages

The California Supreme Court has rejected a petition from Prop 8 backers asking it to halt same-sex marriages in California, Bloomberg reports:

Proposition 8 backers filed a petition July 12 and asked the state’s high court to order county clerks to enforce the gay-marriage ban, claiming the measure was still valid because a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last month didn’t find it was unconstitutional. They asked for an immediate injunction reinstating the law while the lawsuit is pending.

“The request for an immediate stay or injunctive relief is denied,” the court said in a filing today, without giving a reason.

Prop 8 authors made the request last Friday. Legal experts considered its success a long shot.
Buzzfeed has more:

The court on Friday had set a schedule requiring a full briefing on the Proposition 8 supporters’ remaining request that the court declare that the trial-court ruling only applies to the four plaintiffs in the litigation brought by the American Foundation for Equal Rights. As such, the supporters of Proposition 8 argue, the trial-court ruling cannot require state officials to stop enforcing Proposition 8.

The opposition to their request is to be filed “in this court on or before Monday, July 22, 2013.” The Proposition 8 supporters will then have “until Thursday, August 1, 2013, in which to serve and file a reply to the preliminary opposition.”

Anti-gay activist seeks CA clerks willing to put discrimination before duty

Back when Prop 8 was up for debate, Randy Thomasson compared clerks who might have to marry same-sex couples with Nazi officers who were forced to "gas the Jews." Now that marriage equality is the law of the land in his state, this longtime California activist is turning his attention back to state clerks, this time seeking a few who will turn themselves into fake "victims" for the anti-LGBT cause:

TO FIND A PRINCIPLED CLERK
On July 3, I spent the day driving through much of the Central Valley, knocking on doors of clerks and communicating the constitutional truth. But does any clerk care about what's right?
I need your help to sensitize them to respect the constitution and the voters. We need to find one or more county clerks who believe in the exclusivity of man-woman marriage as well as his oath to abide by the state constitution, and who is not overwhelmingly afraid of liberal forces.
Such a clerk, who is locally elected, is likely to be in the Central Valley and other parts of California that are strongly for man-woman marriage.
ALERT: Urge county clerks to uphold Prop. 8 [SaveCalifornia.com]

I love his admission that he "need[s] your help to sensitize them." We all have our own synonyms for "dupe."

Religious right petitions Supreme Court to stop CA gay marriages

UPDATE: The Supreme Court rejected an emergency request to stop same-sex marriages in California, a lawyer for the gay couples who sued said Sunday.
Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., one of the lawyers who challenged Proposition 8, said that he had just received word from the court Sunday morning that Justice Anthony M. Kennedy denied a request by ProtectMarriage, the sponsors of Proposition 8, to halt the marriages.
Boutrous said that Kennedy, who handles petitions from the Western states, did not comment on the decision.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order late Friday that allowed gay marriages to resume in California, a step that ProtectMarriage said was premature and in violation of procedural rules.
Kennedy wrote Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling that required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages in the Defense of Marriage Act case. He dissented in the Proposition 8 decision, however, which said that ProtectMarriage and other initiative sponsors could not stand in the place of state officials to defend the measure in federal court.
The 9th Circuit normally waits 25 days before acting on a case just decided by the Supreme Court. But in a surprise move, a three-judge panel that included liberal jurist Stephen Reinhardt lifted a hold it had placed on a 2010 injunction ordering state officials to stop enforcing the gay marriage ban.

-------------------------

In a move as desperate as it is pathetic, the religious right asked the Supreme Court to stop California’s gay marriages that began anew last night when the appellate court lifted it stay on an earlier decision finding Proposition 8 unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court ruled this past Wednesday that the religious right plaintiffs did not have standing to appeal the case, and thus the initial ruling, finding Prop 8 unconstitutional, stands.  The court also struck down the section of the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act that forbade the federal government from providing federal marriage benefits to legally-wed gay couples. Those benefits have now begun.
But, the religious right is now arguing that the Supreme Courts permits losers in a dispute before the court 25 days to petition the court to reconsider its decision.  The religious right is arguing that it still has 22 days left, so marriages in California cannot begin, they say, until the religious right gets a chance to file its petition.  They want the Supreme Court to, in essence, stop the 9th circuit from lifting its stay until 25 days have passed, or the religious right files its petition for reconsideration fo the decision.
So far, legal experts don’t think the religious right has a chance, but there still is the possibility that the court would delay such marriages on the technicality that the religious right still has 22 days to file it petition.

According to Bryan H. Wildenthal, professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California. Wildenthal takes the approach that we should, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan, trust but verify that the religious right doesn’t have a chance:

I’m still laughing (I’m the “trying not to bust a gut” correspondent), but you are correct, that the notorious “gay exception” in all things legal (which has bitten us all in the ass before) must be watched-out-for.
This is the same U.S. Supreme Court that bizarrely intervened in a district-court-level trial management issue of how/whether to broadcast trial proceedings in this very same Prop 8 litigation (a relatively trivial trial management issue totally unworthy of Supreme Court attention, and which the Supreme Court would never normally have concerned itself with).
So, I would say, celebrate as the marriages continue, but we cannot rest entirely easily until the Supreme Court has denied (or time for motion has expired) on a motion to reconsider the Prop 8 decision.

Prop 8 couples both marry last night! Let the weddings begin!

 

Scenes from Prop. 8 rally in West Hollywood

The celebration in West Hollywood after yesterday’s Supreme Court Prop. 8 decision was so joyous.

NOM's Brian Brown: SCOTUS Ruling a 'Stench', 'an Illegitimate Decision', 'Rewarding Corruption'

National Organization for Marriage President Brian Brown is unhinged over the Supreme Court rulings on marriage:

"In a miscarriage of justice the US Supreme Court has refused to consider the decision of a single federal court judge to overturn the perfectly legal action of over 7 million California voters who passed Proposition 8 defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman," said Brain Brown, NOM's president.

"The Supreme Court's holding that proponents of an initiative had no legal right to appeal ignores California law and rewards corrupt politicians for abandoning their duty to defend traditional marriage laws. It's imperative that Congress continue to preserve the right of states to protect true marriage and refuse to recognize faux marriages performed in other states or countries."

"There is a stench coming from this case that has now stained the Supreme Court. They've allowed corrupt politicians and judges to betray the voters, rewarding them for their betrayal. It's an illegitimate decision. We and millions of other Americans will refuse to accept this rogue decision rewarding corruption. " Brown said.

"We also urge Congress to reject the inevitable attempts to dismantle remaining elements of DOMA, including the right of states to refuse to recognize so-called gay marriages performed elsewhere. The vast majority of American voters have expressed with their votes their desire to maintain marriage as the union of one man and one woman. That decision should be respected and left undisturbed."

"The only other saving grace of the Supreme Court's decisions today is that they refused to go along with the urgings of Ted Olsen and David Boies to find a constitutional right to same-sex ‘marriage,'" Brown said. "The plaintiffs failed in their primary objective, which is a major victory for 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."