Hearing Today: Lawsuit Hopes to Stop SF's Same-Sex 'Marriage' Licenses
by Jody Brown
February 17, 2004
(AgapePress) - A lawsuit filed by a California pro-family group is to be heard today in San Francisco. The suit seeks to bring a halt to the tidal wave of marriage licenses that, under the authorization of the city's mayor, have been issued over the last four days to homosexual couples.
The lawsuit was filed on Friday by Liberty Counsel on behalf of the Campaign for California Families, one day after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom instructed the county to begin issuing "marriage" licenses to same-sex couples. Tuesday was the earliest date on which Liberty Counsel's lawsuit and request for a restraining order could be heard before a San Francisco judge. The hearing is scheduled for 11:00 a.m. Pacific time.
Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel points out that California law does not allow same-sex marriage. Proposition 22, passed by a majority vote of 61.4 percent in March 2000, states that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Staver says city officials in San Francisco are in obvious violation of the law.
"Mayor Newsom and [County] Clerk Nancy Alfaro are no more able to issue same-sex marriage licenses than they are able to issue pilot's licenses," he says. "Just as pilot's licenses are under federal jurisdiction, marriage licenses are under the jurisdiction of the state."
But according to Associated Press, city attorneys plan to argue that local government agencies or officials are not barred from advancing their own interpretation of the state constitution -- and that supporters of Proposition 22 have failed to demonstrate that continuing to issue licenses for homosexual couples would cause "irreparable harm," a necessary threshold for obtaining a court stay.
AP reports that if the request for an emergency stay is denied on Tuesday, the plaintiffs will immediately appeal the decision to the California Supreme Court.
'A Joyous, Civil Rights Thing'
Since Thursday, homosexual activists and their supporters -- from the mayor on down -- have been busy at city hall. The county clerk's office handles an average of 25-30 applications for marriage licenses each business day. But since Thursday, more than 2,300 licenses have been issued to homosexual couples, many of whom rushed to San Francisco in hopes of beating today's court hearing, which could stop such licenses from being issued.
The county clerk's office remained open over the Valentine's Day weekend and through the President's Day holiday to meet the demand for same-sex marriage licenses. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that on Monday, "a cadre of city workers deputized to perform weddings presided over 10 simultaneous ceremonies ... while caterers and donors moved by the spectacle" supplied waiting couples with donated food.
The Sun-Times quotes Penny Nixon, who is senior pastor of the predominantly homosexual Metropolitan Community Church in San Francisco. As she prepared to officiate at a friend's "wedding," Nixon said: "Usually, humanity comes out like this when there is a disaster, but here we have a joyous, civil rights thing going on and people have just rallied."
'Recipe for Disaster'
But a disaster is exactly what one Christian attorney says is in the making. Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, writes that what was once "utterly inconceivable" is now reality.
"The definition of marriage, and thus the essence of marriage itself, is under attack," he says, in reference to recent events in both Massachusetts and California. "Only an amendment to our organic law will protect what is organic to civilization. The stakes could not be higher."Fahling goes on to say that there is a profound difference between "regulating" marriage -- which states already do through tax laws and the like-- and "redefining" it. He contends that to say states have a right to redefine marriage is not to say states have the right to regulate marriage "but rather, to destroy it."
"If the states' rights argument wins out, then states will be free to legalize same-sex marriages, polygamy, or any other combination of people who happen to have emotional attachment and sexual attraction to each other," the attorney writes. "It is a recipe for disaster."
Fahling says he is convinced that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, is critical. And while he fully understands that such an amendment would take time, he sees it as "the only surety we have against the inevitability of the redefinition of marriage by states and courts in the years ahead."
Read Brian Fahling's column in its entirety
