Saturday, June 21, 2008

Note #2 On the California Supreme Court's Opinion: the Appellate Court

The California Appellate Court did not seem to be forceful enough in the language of its opinion. This, in turn, left the Supreme Court a little wiggle room in which to continue its legal chicanery and "gottcha" word games. Here, from page 51 of the opinion (with my addendums and notes in parentheses):

“…the constitutional right to marry under the California Constitution properly should be interpreted to afford only a right to marry a person of the opposite sex,”

(These words ought to have been included for plainness: 'The constitutional right to marry, discovered by case law under the California Constitution, was surely in the mind of the framing court, a right for those who can marry to marry. There is no injury to the plaintiffs because they do not have the ability to be married to each other. Hence, their ability to marry a member of the opposite sex remains without offense...')

"...and that the constitutional right that plaintiffs actually are asking the court to recognize is a constitutional 'right to same-sex marriage.'”

(These words ought to have been redacted for accuracy: "same sex marriage". Instead, these words might have been more prudent: 'right to an imaginary kind of marriage that does not exist. Since there is no such thing, the plaintiffs might just as well complain that the Constitution of California has unjustly restricted their ability to freely speak with griffins.')

“In the absence of any historical or precedential support for such a right in this state, the Court of Appeal determined that plaintiffs’ claim of the denial of a fundamental right under the California Constitution must be rejected."

On this last paragraph, the appellate court cannot be undermined. However, they had already given the court some unintended leverage for its deceitful word game:

“— the (Supreme) court (in Perez -- about interracial marriage) did not characterize the constitutional right that the plaintiffs in that case sought to obtain as “a right to interracial marriage” and did not dismiss the plaintiffs’ constitutional challenge on the ground that such marriages never had been permitted in California.”

This is true, but the court in Perez did not have to look far for the definition of marriage. This was found in the entire history of the civilized world. In fact, no state, except those in these United States, may have ever been so backwards as to refuse the right to marry on the basis of race. The 1944 Perez decision was correct because the right to pursue happiness and liberty was not limited by race. The Court could find this right in Perez because a. Jefferson had slipped this right into the U.S. Constitution while those who ratified it were too stupid to notice or too greedy to care, and b. this fundamental human right was ordained by God for all people (The other rights unremunerated by the founding documents include all such God given abilities; however, it is the right of the people to convene conventions to describe these yet unremunerated rights, for they have not been relinquished by the people of These United States to the Federal Courts or to the Supreme Courts. These unremunerated rights may only be set forth in a constitutional convention.).

In this case the rights are not limited by race, by gender, or by religion. In fact, the “marriage” gay rights activists envision are limited because of the inability of same sex couples to enter into marriage. The court will seek to redefine marriage to seek an offense that can only be remedied by a redefinition of marriage.