The following comes from a March 18 story in the New York Times
Nine years ago, city officials here sued to strike down a state ban on same-sex marriage. It was the first government challenge to such a law, and it set in motion a legal chain reaction that gave rise to a momentous Supreme Court case to be argued next Tuesday.
The move was also the beginning of a kind of civil disobedience movement by government officials. Around the nation, executive branch officials started to abandon their traditional role, which is to enforce the laws and defend them when they are challenged in court.
“We’re defense lawyers,” Dennis J. Herrera, the city attorney, said in his office in San Francisco’s palatial City Hall. “We defend laws that are on the books. And we got a lot of heat at the time for stepping out of that traditional defense role.”
In the years that followed, Mr. Herrera’s office — which now includes five former Supreme Court law clerks, more than some major law firms — has been involved in every phase of the legal war over same-sex marriage in California.
San Francisco’s strategy eventually spread to the State of California and the federal government. Instead of defending state and federal laws defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, President Obama and Gov. Jerry Brown of California urged courts to hold them unconstitutional.
That has complicated the Supreme Court’s job in challenges to Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriages, and to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Because the plaintiffs and defendants in both cases agree that the laws under review are unconstitutional, there is a question about whether the justices have anything to decide. Indeed, when the justices in December agreed to hear the two same-sex marriage cases, they went out of their way to ask for briefs on whether the court has the power to decide them in light of the actions of government officials.
John C. Eastman, a law professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., and the chairman of the National Association for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage, said government officials in the two cases had demonstrated “a cavalier attitude toward their duties to enforce the law.” He was particularly critical of Mr. Herrera’s suit, which followed a brief period in 2004 during which Gavin Newsom, then the mayor of San Francisco and now the state’s lieutenant governor, instructed city officials here to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. “It was exhibiting lawlessness,” Professor Eastman said.
Mr. Herrera said it was sometimes necessary for government lawyers to attack the laws they are charged with defending. “When a disfavored minority is being targeted,” he said, “it’s up to a public law office to stop it.”
San Francisco’s role in the Proposition 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, has been overshadowed by that of Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, the prominent lawyers who in 2009 filed the suit challenging the initiative. The city promptly intervened, and the two teams of lawyers worked closely together at the trial.
Mr. Olson, a former United States solicitor general who has argued some 60 cases in the Supreme Court, said the quality of the work from Mr. Herrera’s office was exceptional.
“Their briefs have been superb,” Mr. Olson said….
To read entire story, click here.
Same sex marriage is an abomination…pure and simple…what next…marrying poultry…livestock…fish raised in hatcheries…same sex marriage is so utterly revolting, it almost makes a grown man puke thinking of the disgusting activity that goes on behind closed doors… men indulging in the perversion of “buggery”…with a band on your finger!…shocking, positively shocking…
How to proceed with probably the most life-changing law, outside of ROE V. WADE, to come down the national legal pike ever. Of course, what all the legal eagles on the left want to do re NORMALIZING SODOMY within the context of creating a FICTIONAL RIGHT for those of the same sex to “marry” is, whether they’d ever admit to it or not, DESTROY the basis for the only marriage that has any legitimacy in human society, heterosexual marriage. And so, for me, what the proponents of Prop. 8 have to do is convincingly argue that in law, both natural or divine, there is NO BASIS for “homo” marriage, none whatsoever. For one can go through recorded history of any and ALL civilizations and find NO GOVERNMENT EVER that sanctioned such a notion (as “gay marriage”). ZIP. ZILCH. NADA. A delusional concept ONLY dreamed of in the fevered imaginations of the lunatic left. (the STONEWALL MOVEMENT of the late ‘sixties doesn’t apply; hardly a serious legal undertaking).
Actually, there IS a bizarre incident from around the 1st century A.D. Nero attempted to “marry” one of his eununchs (spelled it right?) in some kind of pagan ritual, the details of which are lost in antiquity. But Nero was kind of a HORRIFIC MADMAN that got at least SOME of his jollies from persecuting the very first Christians, CATHOLICS. (Evangelical Christians don’t like to hear that about the first Christians, but it’s historically TRUE. CATHOLICS all) So any attempt to establish a “right” for homosexuals and lesbians to “marry” SHOULD be doomed from the get-go. It’s anti-historical and anti-civilizational. But this is in many ways a demonically confused time. I think Sister Lucia mentioned it some years after the Fatima messages. She prophesied that we’d enter a DIABOLICALLY DISORIENTED PHASE of world history. Proof? Just meditate over the whole “Obama thing.” Then the world descending into it’s “legally abort” (murder) epoch. Now the “gay marriage” imbroglio. Are we in the final stages fast leading to the appearance of the “man of sin?” Don’t know, but could take an educated guess. And that would be……… Only the Father knows, no, not even the SON. So here we all are. Best to always strive to be in a state of SANCTIFYING GRACE. One never knows. GOD BLESS ALL, MARKRITE
Canada isn’t a country? Merkrite?
Or Argentina, Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Iceland, Norway,Portugal, Spain, South Africa, Sweden aren’t countries and don’t exist?
Certainly those are recent—I think they’re all 21st century. But, certainly, none never nada in all recorded history isn’t true. If you specify BEFORE the 21st century you might have a better case.
Your logic is flawed Jon…the longevity of the country has nothing to do with the depravity and sinfulness of the act. The Church and scripture is explicitly clear…homosexual activity is CONDEMNED…same sex marriage is CONDEMNED. What a secular government allows is irrelevant… as Catholics, we are expected to conform to a HIGHER law!
Uhhh, Taipan how is my logic “flawed” when I am saying that governments have indeed sanctioned gay marriage in response to someone who says it has never been done?
“The heavens and the earth will pass away but my words will not pass.” Matthew 24.35
What is it like to work against God’s word? Like trying to whistle down the wind.
so called “gay” marriage I believe, will be WORSE for our culture than abortion. We are winning that battle, this one? Im pessimistic about our chances.
They slowly and surely, sometimes through subterfusion, invaded our Court Sytem, and they waited until they had enough of their ilk in position to make their efforts actually known. I still remember discussing my concerns with the late Congressman Clyde Doyle that they would get into the Court system and destroy us from within. THEY HAVE DONE SO!
Unless America massively repents, we are lost!
God bless, yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
I can’t understand why Ted Olson is involved in supporting gay marriage. His wife, Barbara was a good, traditionalist and we thought he was also. What has happened to him? Who or what changed him? Liberals, especially ones who join up with Boies are supposed to tout the freedom of choice, but they don’t want choice for Christians or for those who believe that marriage is a sacred bond between a man and woman, all else is just politics. How truly sad.