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.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 2

The Defense-Intervenor's Attorney David Thompson completes his cross-examination of the Plaintiffs' expert witness Professor George Chauncey on discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the history in the United States. The SF City and County Attorney Therese Stewart, redirects the witness.

As the day opens, Attorney David Thompson confronts Chauncey with all manner of evidence, including his own work that things have not changed for the better for gays and lesbians in the United States and trying to get him to concede on the stand that gay men and lesbians have amassed significant political power in the US. Chauncey stoutly tries and succeeds to limit the effect of his prior statements by insisting that the improvements are incomplete due to political polarisation. THANK YOU, CLINTON. THANK YOU, ROVE. THANK YOU, BUSH. He also asserts that the process of integrating gays into American social life slowed or stopped in 2004, when a bunch of states passed Proposition-8-like initiatives to utterly ban gay and lesbian marriage, and sometimes civil unions, explicitly in their state constitutions. Chauncey resists and insists that such these ballot question setbacks and other forms of antigay discrimination is based on a view that same-sex relationships are unequal and inferior. Thompson makes the big mistake of not restricting Chauncey to simply saying yes or no.

Chauncey scored a very important point against the D-I Team, disputing their claim that being taught about same-sex marriage is bad for children. As revealed during the trial's first day, the Yes On 8 Campaign included a TV commercial relating how a Massachusetts grade school now includes fairy tales that end with the prince marrying the prince. Cross-examining gay plaintiff Paul Katami on Day One, defense lawyer Raum backed him up into a corner and managed to get him to waffle on whether or not parents could legitimately object to that, cleverly conflating the meaning of “morality,” and implying that any mention of homosexual marriage is tantamount to sex education! Again, Thompson makes the strategic error of trying to back Professor Chauncey into the same corner! Describing the Massachusetts fairy tale ad: “Is it reasonable for parents who morally disapprove of homosexuality to want to wait until the fifth or sixth grade for those sorts of issues to be taught in public school?”

Instead of being derailed by the red herring about sex, Chauncey immediately sees through the question: “Well, would you say that people who morally disapprove of racial equality or racial marriage should be able to insist that no books showing black and white people as equal or black and white people in relationships should be kept out of the schools?”

And then Chauncey drives the point home, skewering the old magical thinking that exposure of children to even the mention of LGBT people will automatically make the little tykes gay: “And in this case the child is simply being exposed to the existence of gay people. And I take note that the parents don't express concern just about marriage, but about homosexuality at all.”

On Therese Stewart's redirect, Chauncey reiterates that the Proposition 8 ballot question itself said nothing about children or what parents can teach them or what they’re taught in school. He clarified that there have long been people whose attractions today might lead them to be identified as gay; that there had been African Americans who questioned integration as a goal; that the progress made by lesbigay people in quarters such as academia has been only partial; that the majority of religious institutions and their congregants still oppose same-sex couples’ marrying and even “homosexuality”; that such religious views can be affected by anti-gay stereotypes, which were dredged up by Yes on 8 and other antigay campaigns before and since. He further stressed that these sorts of campaigns invariably reduce LGBT people to the sex act, essentially turning us into animals and "unnatural" ones at that!: "It focuses entirely -- it suggests the focus on homosexuality entirely as a matter of sexuality, not love, not relationships. This is actually a book about two princes falling in love and it's a fairy tale. It doesn't talk about sex. It's another fairy tale that seems appropriate to that age."

This is critical! Reducing us gay men and lesbians to absolutely nothing but sex and then invoking the sexual innocence of children has been a very effective strategy for the opponents of gay marriage, who prey on the magical thinking of misinformed people! Chauncey reveals what is really going on: libel, slander, and defamation of character in a smear campaign worthy of Goebbels! Would Thompson say that people who disapprove of interracial marriage should be allowed to pull their children out of school when they study the civil rights movement? HAHAHA.






Many thanks to to MarriageTrial.com.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 3 Chapter 1

Thompson’s cross-examination of Professor Chauncey continues today. He is trying to get Professor Chauncey to concede that LGBT people have amassed significant political power, but the professor stands his ground that LGBT people are still relatively powerless because of the severe polarization caused by the continuous and ongoing backlash from "Religious Right" groups. At several points the D-I's attorney gets to be pretty damn annoying!



Video from MarriageTrial.com's YouTube page.

LGBT Youth Bullied Three Times More than Straight Youth.

From Science Daily on February 1st:

In a nation wide study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, it is reported that kesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and other sexual minority youths are bullied two to three times as often as heterosexual youths are. LGBT(etc.) youth are also more vulnerable to mental stresses such as suicidal thoughts. It is also interesting to note that older adolescents are also bullied. So the problem is in both Junior and Senior High, all the way up to senior year.

Which shows that work still needs to be done to create school environments that are supportive and accepting of all students regardless of the students' sexual orientation. At the very least, schools need to lay down rules that bullying will not be tolerated, period.

Nationwide Children's Hospital (2010, February 1). Sexual minority youth bullied more than heterosexual youth. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 2, 2010, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2010/01/100127182503.htm

Problem is: it is always the religious right propagandists that oppose this. The most shameful being the "ex-gay" cult known as Exodus International.

Utterly Disgusting and Insane Hate Video.

I found this at Joe.My.God. The original is at WorldNutDaily.

WARNING -- COARSE LANGUAGE ALERT.

Pardon my Fench but I am majorly pissed off and very angry.

Just fucking revolting. And twisting MLK's inspirational fight for freedom into killing human beings is beyond abhorrent.

The recent open talk about rounding us up should be seen as a RED ALERT.

The ramp-up of this type of vicious, violent rhetoric is truly disturbing -- it demands that we be more active, confrontational and vocal oursleves. Queer Rising and other groups who've started civil disobedience got it right; this has to be in your face, every day and a demand for no less than full equality -- and these morons publicized and confronted.

I'm sick of gay people who are too chickenshit to push back. You can't make a moral equivalence between hatred of the oppressor and hatred of the oppressed. We have no obligation to treat people like Molotov Mitchell with a shred of respect or even common politeness.

These people are classic bullies, and the only way their evil will be reigned in is if they have something to lose by bullying us.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment, Day 2 Chapter 1

In this installment, Atty. Ted Boutros finishes his direct examination of Professor Nancy Cott. Her expert opinion is that there has NOT been a tradition in this country of marriage being strictly for purposes of procreation, marriage has historically been restricted upon the basis of race, marriage has increasingly become a domestic partnership of two equals, same-sex marriage would be beneficial for same-sex couples, and in her home state of Massachusetts divorce rates have dropped slightly (by 2/10ths of 1% out of 100% of all opposite-sex (?) marriages) since same-sex marriage became legally recognised there.

Prop 8 Trial Re-Enactment - Day 1 Chapter 4

Today David Boies completed examining Kristin Perry and examined Sandra Shier. Their testimonies were very poignant. Then, Theodore Boutros examined the plaintiff's expert witness on the history of marriage in the United States, Dr. Nancy Cott, Ph.D. When she tried to testify about marriage outside the US as it pertains to marriage inside the US, she and Mr. Boutros were almost derailed by the defense-intervenor's counsel, saying: "OBJECTION, your honor! It was noted in the deposition that she was only an expert on marriage within the United States and that she is not an expert on marriage outside of the United States," yada yada yada... District Judge Vaughn A. Walker bent over backwards for the D-I counsel and Mr. Boutros had to carefully ask questions about marriage outside the United States as it pertained to marriage inside the United States, including the founders' observation and known history of marriage outside US society.

And this is the judge that ProtectMarriage.com is now denouncing as an impossible-to-be-impartial, gay activist judge. You will find out later why in future installments when the reenactment of the trial proceedings will reveal a serious lack of preparation and a total appearance of ridiculousness, ludicrousness and arrogance on the part of the defense-intervenor's counsel.

A Straight Woman Comes Around on Same Sex Marriage.

This is the story of her journey.