Calla Devlin Rongerude

Glad to seeTherese Stewart, Chief Deputy City Attorney,San Francisco will probably be involved with this case.  In my opinion she is awesome!

Haha.Excuse me while I cry some crocodile tears for these very same orgs that were relentlessly attacking Chad Griffin, Ted Olson, and David Boies IN PUBLIC for pursuing this law suit. Since they tried so hard early on to sabotage this historic effort, the judge was right to slap them down and keep them from interfering with the Olson-Boies case.

Agreed.Therese Stewart was the single best lawyer of all the lawyers who argued the Strauss v. Horton case in the CA Supreme Court. And since (AFAIK) the City & County of SF wasn’t so publicly trashing the proponents of this suit like the advocacy groups were, I don’t suspect they’ll torpedo this case.

I don’t like this.I sincerely hope I’m wrong, but this gives me a really bad feeling.

Well, this case is for one judge and one judge onlyand hs name is Anthony Kennedy. We honetly don’t know which way he might go on something like this.

He was with us in Lawrence and in Romer.He also cares about nothing as much as his legacy, and I’m sure even he can tell how history is going to look back on this issue.

I’m with ya!It completely turned me off when they went on their verbal bashings of the case.

This really is not bad newsLook, it’s not their case to handle, it’s the lawyers chosen by the plaintiffs, which lawyers are Olson/Boies.  It’s clear now that the LGBT groups will be able to file amicus briefs, etc., but they won’t be running case strategy.
There is an article in today’s New York Times at:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nyt…
(actually, online yesterday at 7:00 PM)
That article makes me feel a lot better about Ted Olson’s involvement.  He’s apparently one of those “conservatives” who is in the libertarian wing of the Republican Party and not the Neo-Con wing or the Religious Extremist wing.  Some of the more radical of the libertarian Republican-types are perfectly reasonable on civil liberties issues, unlike their more authoritarian counterparts (religious or otherwise).  One of my better friends from my YAF days in college is a prime mover among libertarian Republicans.  
The bad news is that Ted Olson is not facing libertarian Republicans in the SCOTUS round, when and if the case gets there – The “gang of four” (Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito) are “social conservatives” and are way more neo-con than libertarian.  Libertarian Republicans are an extremely tiny minority in the Republican party (they’re the “good ones” from my POV).
So that means he will have to win over the other five justices unanimously – a tall bill to fill especially on something still perceived as “controversial” in society (even though I think we’re talking about a basic civil right).  
We don’t even have the fig leaf from 1967′s Loving case, of having most states being gender-neutral marriage-inclusive – we’re at 1/10th right now.  That will probably affect at least one or two of those five that we need.  Remember, the majority in Lawrence agreed with Sandra Day O’Connor that Lawrence would not be seen as precedential for marriage.  (Only rabid opponent Scalia, with his brilliant but twisted mind, could see the inevitability of this, in his dissent in that case).
If I believed that Justice Scalia could be impartial, I would actually expect him to rule in favor of marriage equality, even though he sees it personally as a moral evil.  But I will eat these words (printed on edible material with edible ink . . . ) if he and rest of the “gang of four” were to rule fairly in this case, if and when it gets to them.

We don’t know thatIn fact, it’s possible that the Supremes could deny cert to this case. It’s got some specifics that make it appealable to the 9th if the Prop 8 groups choose to do so, as everyone expects they will upon a loss.
However, it could stop there. In the other states in the 9th CA, different facts apply. There’s a question about whether you can federalize the claim of a couple from Washington to have their state move from not recognizing their CA marriage, per its Supreme Court ruling in 2004, to forcing that recognition. So that’s another choice point at which the parties get to look at the landscape.
Anything we can do politically in the meantime, to make it easier for SCOTUS to find our way, is probably a good investment of time.

I was with them on that –They’re aiming to put the case before a group of “justices” who would be more than willing to set aside ethics, law and precedent to deliver the hetero-supremacist ruling that Olson and Boies know will be the result (and which will set precedent for decades).  The LGBT groups who actually have experience working against the hetero-supremacists will be working to minimize the amount of damage done, even though the lawsuit is ethically the right position to take.

The “Libertarian” wing of the GOPhas determined that LGBT people are often associated with socialists and are thus unworthy of any legal recognition or protection.  These are the same people that oppose employment non-discrimination laws on the grounds that the First Amendment is a property-rights amendment put in place to prevent anyone with money from having to allow the resources they claim as property to be used by anyone they don’t like.  At least they’re willing to take a position of majestic equality regarding non-discrimination — they support the legality of discrimination in employment, housing, healthcare, etc. on any grounds (including pure whim), not just hetero-supremacy.

But how do we know what the result will be…If we don’t even try? Honestly, it will probably take quite a few years for this to even reach SCOTUS. Much can happen in these next 3-5 years. More states will probably legalize marriage equality. Perhaps more national politicians will grow some spine and show support for marriage equality. And of course, more SCOTUS seats may open up.
Oh, and let’s not forget Ted Olson’s stellar track record of winning 44 of 55 cases he made to SCOTUS. I’m sure he, David Boies, and Chad Griffin know what they’re doing. And if the big LGBT orgs don’t like what they’re doing, they don’t have to participate. I was just offended that they wanted to hijack the case not too long after they wanted absolutely nothing to do with it… AND trashed the case in the media.

I think this is cleaner without our organizations involvedIf this gives us a horrible precidence to overcome, where the blame lays is absolutely clear, and they’ll have NO WHERE TO HIDE.

Trial scheduled Jan 11 2010.http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…
Wow, that’s fast tracked!
I believe this is good news.

Short of 3 or 4 justices retiring,we know that it won’t go our way.  The best-case scenario for this point is a federal restatement of the CA SC’s Plessy v. Ferguson logic — and that’s if there are multiple unexpected retirements and Obama’s future nominations drift uncharacteristicly to the left instead of the right.  This isn’t a matter of whether we have ethics on our side — we do.  But any foreseeable SC lineup in the next few years will have a devoted hetero-supremacist majority willing to overlook just about anything to deliver a precedent which suits their biases.

They don’t need anywhere to “hide”.For most of the right-wingers who control public discourse, hetero-supremacist readings of the law and ethics are “common sense”, which gives the SC enough cover to vote their biases instead of any residual sense of ethics.

I see a bigger picture at the SCOTUS levelSCOTUS could easily just choose not to review this case on the grounds that it is simply just a state issue. Which is I suspect what the conservative faction of the court would want to do–regardless of fairness. However, there is also the fact that a perfect storm is brewing that seems to me to be as predictable as an Atlantic hurricane in season.
The 9th circuit, which is less liberal than its reputation and it seems to me just cantankerously independent from western breeding, has already reflected on the issues that surround the denial of same-sex marriage in DOMA and have found it to be inconvenient and unconstitutional for its own employees and are probably chomping at the bit for a reason to send it on to SCOTUS. I can’t say I know much about the 1st circuit by my guess is, though conservative they probably reflect a similar fierce independence when it comes to the lives of average everyday Americans.  
That independence and fierce desire for not only fairness but for less government interpretation on independent American lives is also the driving force behind the N.E. support LGBT Americans have enjoyed in the New England States that have already approved same-sex marriage. Though few commentators seem to have recognized the similarity in both the West and New England up to now. Currently Massachusetts also has a court case pending and moving toward SCOTUS challenging DOMA.
My hope is that the two cases will force the Supreme Court to take up marriage equality as an issue for the country similar to the way the California Supreme which managed to bat down individual cases prior to 2008 but it seems could not avoid the multiple cases coming at it prior to prop 8. If these cases lose they lose. No country precedent is set unless SCOTUS chooses to over reach itself unlawfully and we are no worse for wear. But if they win they effect the country as a whole and that in itself is a good enough reason to encourage their advancement and their risk. Fasten your seat belts because it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

On the other hand . . . . . . there are different intensities of libertarian, and there are those with a more moderate view who admit that with rights come responsibilities.
My view of the second amendment (despite the SCOTUS) sees it as involving a right – to own firearms, coupled with a responsibility – to have the training and organize with others in the community to be a militia (these days, I’d see being a volunteer firefighter or doing other community service in addition to being properly trained in the responsible use of one’s firearms to suffice as “militia” service).
Historically, the SCOTUS has recognized that rights are not completely untrammeled.  A libertarian would draw the line less restrictively on the freedom, though those who would draw no limiting line at all tend toward anarchism. The authoritarian would tend to draw more restrictions, though those who restrict the most tend toward totalitarianism.
My personal journey from being in the libertarian wing of YAF (Young Americans for Freedom) when I was in college in the 1970′s to where I am today, started veering based on a picture-book, of all things:
The Good Old Days, They were Terrible
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Old…
I realized when looking at the pictures, that the “government interference” I had previously seen as oppressive was based on untrammeled excess resulting from failing to draw a line on individual freedom.
The FDA was created because too much freedom on the part of profiteering food sellers led to widespread fraud (foul concoctions being sold as butter, a mixture of chalk and water being sold as milk, for example), with similar things happening in the patent medicine department.
The existence of government agencies didn’t stop Beechnut from selling colored sugar water as apple juice in the early 1980′s (my daughter drank a lot of colored sugar water – and the result of the regulatory agency action was a coupon for Beech Nut products.  I have never bought another one of their products.)
Government gets involved when freedom becomes power, and the power is misused to the detriment of the public.  Responsible freedom is the key – and I’ve learned that both the “free market” and “communism” contain the same fatal flaw – both require goodness to work well.  We can’t expect goodness from human nature – for every Howard Roark there are at least a dozen exploiters whose excesses can only be curbed by government action.
Coming to this from a libertarian start has been an interesting journey – I still see waste in a lot of government spending, but see the necessity for much of it.
If we all had a level playing field, the market would be colorblind, genderblind, religion-blind, sexual-orientation-blind, etc. by its nature.  But since people do have prejudices, it makes sense to have non-dscrimination laws.
The usual objection I get from the Libertarian Republican types to human rights laws, is that they object to the listing of protected classes.  They see this as an unnecessary limiting factor and an unnecessary cluttering of statutory drafting.
Unfortunately, the libertarian Republicans are hugely outnumbered by their neocon and Christianist Dominionist counterparts, who prefer to have no line drawn on their freedom to discriminate, unless the discrimination is aimed at (or even perceived to be aimed at) themselves.