Anarchy Reigns in Frisco; City Officials Rationalize Their Defiance of Law
by Jody Brown
March 8, 2004
(AgapePress) - America has been swept up in the homosexual "marriage" juggernaut over the past three weeks. One pro-family leader says authorities in California need to get off the mark and enforce the law because crimes are occurring -- and nothing is being done to stop it from continuing.
People across America are wondering where the defiance of God's law and natural law will lead. A Massachusetts judge orders that state's lawmakers to enact legislation legalizing homosexual "marriage." The mayor of San Francisco defies state law and begins issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Then mayors in New York and Oregon jump on board and are followed by the mayor of Seattle, who said on Friday that even though his state will not conduct same-sex "weddings" -- because of the state's Defense of Marriage Act -- it will begin recognizing the "marriages" of homosexual state employees who go elsewhere to "tie the knot."
Like many other pro-family leaders, California's Randy Thomasson wonders if and when the anarchy will stop -- but he is convinced where it started: San Francisco. And as if the situation could not become even worse, the executive director of Campaign for California Families -- a long-time warrior on behalf of traditional marriage -- says it has. On Friday, he says, the City of San Francisco filed papers in the case of Thomasson v. Newsom, claiming that local governments can disobey any law they think is unconstitutional.
"Barring local governments from taking independent actions to conform their conduct to the state and federal constitutions would undermine this system of government," those papers stated.
Randy Thomasson | |
Thomasson's reaction? "San Francisco has fallen off the planet," he says, putting words to an opinion held by many pro-family advocates for some time. "Located in California -- yet openly rebelling against state law by redefining marriage -- San Francisco should haul down the California and America flags that it seems to despise so much."Thomasson's group has asked -- in both the public forum and in the courts -- that California Attorney Bill Lockyer intervene in the virtually non-stop "wedding march" in the City by the Bay, where Mayor Gavin Newsom's pre-Valentine's Day proclamation has resulted in more than 3,600 same-sex wedding ceremonies being performed. Lockyer has done nothing to stop them from continuing.
"This is a no-brainer," Thomasson says. "The City of San Francisco is violating at least ten laws in the Family Code, the Penal Code, and the State Constitution. [The city] has been breaking the law and turning marriage upside down for more than three weeks now. It's high time for the law, which is very pregnant with punishment for the City of San Francisco, to start working."
Thomasson would like to see California follow the lead of New York State Justice Vincent Bradley, who issued a temporary restraining order barring homosexual marriage licenses in the town of New Paltz. The mayor of that small community has been charged with 19 criminal counts for issuing marriage licenses to homosexual couples.
In his ruling in the New Paltz case, Justice Bradley says irreparable harm obviously occurs when public officials disobey the law. "If we all did the same," he wrote, "our world would become far more chaotic than it already is."
Scott Lively, president of the California-based Pro-Family Law Center, agrees with Bradley, saying the California Supreme Court should "uphold the law and follow the good logic that has been displayed in the State of New York." And constitutional attorney David Llewellyn says when "personal autonomy overrides laws, you have no element where you can stop it."
A spokeswoman for the Sacramento Alliance for Civil Rights also takes issue with the leadership example being displayed by Mayor Newsom and Attorney General Lockyer. "What are they telling us [and] our young people?" Brenda Bennett asks. "If you don't like a law, you just break it? You just violate it?"
Just like individual citizens, Bennett says, elected officials must be held accountable. "The law needs to address what they're doing and hold them accountable, because they're not doing what they were elected to do -- which is to uphold the law [and] carry out the law, regardless of how they feel about it," she says.
Thomasson says Lockyer -- the state's "top cop" -- must exercise the powers and authority of his office and take control of the situation in San Francisco. "We have not seen prosecutions from [Lockyer's] office, yet New York State is prosecuting those who violate the law on marriage," he says. "Bill Lockyer needs to catch up and do his job. He's three weeks late already."
