ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Thursday, August 12 2010

Same-sex marriage ruling usurps voters
By Colleen Carroll Campbell

Thank goodness for judges like Vaughn Walker. While the rest of us ordinary Americans angst and argue over the implications of gay marriage, struggling to decide whether our nation will preserve or chuck the millennia-old definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman, elites like Walker make things easy on us. They simplify the issue by taking it out of our hands altogether.

Walker, chief judge of the Federal District Court of the Northern District of California, overturned the expressed will of 7 million voters in his state last week when he struck down Proposition 8, a gay-marriage ban that passed by a solid margin in 2008.

His verdict was unsurprising, given his conduct during the trial. Defenders of traditional marriage knew they were in trouble early on, when Walker changed a longstanding rule against televised trials in order to make the case a YouTube sensation, despite the documented risk of intimidation such publicity posed for Proposition 8 supporters. The U.S. Supreme Court scuttled Walker's broadcast plan, but he still managed to compromise the privacy and the free-speech rights of Proposition 8 supporters by exposing their internal communications. Walker also surprised both sides with an early announcement that the trial would focus on the supposed "facts" of gay marriage rather than legal arguments about constitutional issues.

Dismissing voter support for California's gay-marriage ban as irrational, the judge issued a 136-page ruling filled with bold declarations of supposedly objective "findings" bereft of solid evidence and bearing suspicious resemblance to the talking points of gay-marriage activists. Among them: The gender of spouses no longer is "an essential part" of marriage, children do not need both a mother and a father and the genetic relationship between parent and child does not matter to a child's welfare.

Never mind that marriage between a man and a woman has existed in nearly every known society in history for the purpose of bridging the divide between the sexes and ensuring that, whenever possible, children are raised by their married mothers and fathers. Walker dismissed this age-old rationale for traditional marriage as a dangerous relic based on "antiquated and discredited notions of gender."

Differences between men and women have no significance or bearing on marriage and family life these days, he argued, and the state has no legitimate interest in giving special status to stable male-female unions for the sake of the children that those unions — unlike gay and lesbian unions — can produce.

Walker did not confine himself to pronouncing on such controversial topics in the present tense. He also offered a series of "facts" and "findings" about the future. Ignoring significant evidence to the contrary, he stated flatly that redefining marriage as a gender-neutral relationship will have no effect on heterosexual marriage rates or the number of children raised in unmarried households. He asserted that the creation of a right to same-sex marriage will not amount to a 'sweeping social change" or affect the First Amendment rights of religious people who oppose it — two claims that even many same-sex marriage proponents dispute.

If that were not enough, the good judge issued his own definition of marriage to solve our national dilemma over the question.

"Marriage," he declared, "is the state recognition and approval of a couple's choice to live with each other, to remain committed to one another and to form a household based on their own feelings about one another and to join in an economic partnership and support one another and any dependents."

Well, that settles that. Marriage is about feelings and money, not children or sexual difference. All those who believe otherwise — such as those 7 million Californians who supported Proposition 8 and majorities of voters in all 31 states where this issue has been put to a popular vote — are simply ignorant, irrational bigots.

Judges like Walker believe an issue as important as our common definition of marriage cannot be decided by common folk. Such judicial power grabs initially appear to be a victory for same-sex marriage advocates. Ultimately, though, they represent a loss for all who believe that Americans should decide for ourselves how we ought to order our life together.

Colleen Carroll Campbell is a St. Louis-based author, former presidential speechwriter and television and radio host of "Faith & Culture" on EWTN. Her website is www.colleen-campbell.com.