August 22, 2009

Van Hollen recusal "strengthens our case"

According to Brian Raum, an Arizona lawyer from the Alliance Defense Fund* spirited in to battle Wisconsin gays:
"I certainly think it helps," he said. "The attorney general's opinion in regard to the [domestic partnership] registry's unconstitutionality may be a positive factor in helping the court to make a decision on this."
Mr. Raum had better familiarize himself with the case law here. There are a number of Wisconsin Supreme Court opinions which address the factors required to show "substantial similarity," and none of them includes for the private views of local politicians.

It won't even be a negative factor.

* "ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith." Except in this case, apparently, in which petitioner Julaine Appling presumes to limit the needs and purposes of gay couples:
The [amendment's] proponents argued that creation, official endorsement, and normalization of such a "look-alike" status would advance the notion that the purpose of forming a couple is more or less limited to the facilitation of the close relationship between, and the felt needs of, its members for as long as it exists, rather than for purposes greater than the relationship itself and the self-directed needs of the individuals comprising it.
The foregoing is pretty much the height of arrogance. As if there aren't already married couples who fail to meet Julaine Appling's extravagantly presumptuous "greater purposes" standards.

What's conspicuously missing from Appling's analysis is where exactly she gets off imposing her personal "family values" on everyone else.

1 comment:

Ordinary Jill said...

Appling's brand of religion requires her to impose it on those around her. Therefore, she can only freely exercise her faith by cramming it down all of our throats. The U.S. has a long tradition of that sort of freedom of religion. The "pilgrims" of Massachusetts Bay Colony did not sail on the Mayflower in order to find religious freedom (they'd been living in Amsterdam for years for that reason), but in order to have the freedom to force their neighbors (the local native tribes and other European settlers) to convert.