Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 4

The Defense-Intervenors' Attorney Nicole Moss, who, according to various livebloggers watching the proceedings, was utterly snotty and condescending, cross-examines Dr. Peplau. Ms. Moss gets Professor Peplau to acknowledge that there are hardly any empirical studies which show that same-sex couples benefit from marriage or benefit more from marriage than from domestic partnerships and later on that we don’t have enough years of experience with marriage in Massachusetts to know empirically whether same-sex couples’ marrying has had an effect on heterosexual marriage. In standing her ground, Professor Peplau replies that researchers know enough about stigma and discrimination against LGBT people and how they affect relationships to predict confidently that same-sex couples would benefit from having our right to marry recognised. Responding to questions about monogamy, Professor Peplau notes that a lower proportion of gay men report valuing it than the proportions among lesbians and married heterosexual couples, although she stresses that some studies were snapshots of gay men in particular places and past times (like L.A. in the 70s / early 80s). Ms. Moss drags Professor Peplau through a drudgery of an "analysis" of complicated numerical hypotheticals about marriages of same-sex couples in Belgium and the Netherlands, though Professor Peplau insists on her lack of foreign jurisdiction expertise and notes that rates of marriage of same-sex couples in Massachusetts are much higher than Moss’s hypotheticals from Belgian data. Echoing arguments from New York State and Washington State cases rejecting same-sex couples’ right to marry, Ms. Moss secures Professor Peplau’s agreement that same-sex couples don’t accidentally get pregnant and have kids the way heterosexuals do. Professor Peplau suggests that the influence of individualism on some decline of marriage has nothing to do with gay and lesbian people -- but of course! Heterosexual couples divorce because the individuals end up having irreconcilable differences with each other, usually over money.

On redirect examination by Plaintiffs' Attorney Christopher Dusseault, Professor. Peplau observes that she knows nothing suggesting gay and lesbian people are more individualistic than heterosexually identified people or less concerned about the welfare of their children. The day then closes with a little discussion about broadcasting the trial or not -- I believe they ended up deciding not to, thanks to certain Justices at SCOTUS.



Credit to MarriageTrial.com.

Let me close with something timely and inspiring from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: "Liberty is too precious to be buried in books."



And just like today, this movie shows that back then, the Senate was utterly corrupt.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 3

San Francisco City and County Attorney Therese Stewart wraps up the re-direct examination of the Plaintiffs' expert witness Professor George Chauncey.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Christopher Dusseault then begins direct examination of Letitia Anne Peplau, a Harvard educated social psychologist on the psychology faculty at UCLA, an expert on close personal relationships, sexual orientation, and gender. Ms. Peplau adds to the plaintiffs’ story by testifying that Proposition 8 hurts gay people who would benefit from marriage. She also testified that Proposition 8 does not harm opposite-sex marriage, which strips the defendants of their only "good" reason for passing Proposition 8, HAHAHA.

She testifies, based on her own research and other experts’ work, that for those adults who choose to marry, marriage is often associated with a wide range of important material, emotional and spiritual benefits, partly due to the revered status of marriage in society; that there are remarkable similarities between same-sex couples and heterosexual couples in respects such as relationship satisfaction, commitment, and stability; that same-sex couples will likely enjoy the same benefits from civil marriage that different-sex couples currently enjoy, consistent with self-reports from same-sex couples who married in Massachusetts (only more so when same-sex marriage is legal nationwide); and that allowing same-sex couples to marry will not harm heterosexual marriage, neither causing fewer different-sex couples to marry nor causing more of them to divorce. She explains that same-sex couples married when it became legal in Massachusetts at higher rates than they had entered civil unions or domestic partnerships. She concludes her direct testimony by noting that the existence of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts for four years has had zero affect on opposite-sex marriages.




Kudos to MarriageTrial.com.