Not a hate group; just stupid & wrong

Let’s start with the easy part.

On November 4, 2008, 7,001,084 Californians voted Yes on Proposition 8. This number matters not just because that meant Prop 8 passed, but because those who disagree with Judge Walker’s ruling invalidating the measure on constitutional grounds make the same argument over and over: “It’s not right for one judge to overturn the vote of 7 million Californians.” What these people never mention is the flip side of that vote: 6,401,482 Californians vote No on Prop 8. With 13.8 million votes cast, that’s a “winning” margin of less than 4.5%. Switch the vote of a little over 300,000 voters, and you have the opposite result.

That hardly constitutes an overwhelming mandate from the voters. It’s much closer to a split decision, especially with a voter turnout of 80% (and 340,000 voters who didn’t even mark a choice on the measure). To argue angrily that Judge Walker overturned the will of the voters is to stretch the truth of a single election beyond reasonable proportions. And given that polls since November 2008 indicate many of those who voted Yes now regret that vote, to argue the United States Constitution against an inconclusive ballot nearly two years prior is not a very bright rhetorical strategy.

Like that’s ever mattered at Fox, CNN or the rest of the mainstream media.

Let’s move to the less easy part, one that has less to do with facts.

But the facts don't support Walker's opinion. Throughout all of recorded history and across every continent on earth, the definition of marriage has always been a union between one man and one woman. It is society's recognition that marriage is unique among family arrangements. That's because it attaches mothers and fathers to their children and provides the framework for multigenerational family bonds.

That’s Michael White of the Oregon Family Council writing in the Oregonian. White is, of course, demonstrably wrong on these facts. While OMOW is indeed a wide-spread cultural norm, it has never been universal nor absolute. The variations are widespread, and include homosexuality, the raising of children by non-parents, societies run by matriarchs and societies where the rule is the dissolution of OMOW-based families on a regular, codified and socially accepted basis. The latter, of course, would be the United States with a divorce rate of over 50%.

White labels the judge’s decision a “campaign against marriage”. In fact, of course, Walker decision was against those who would limit, and therefore, weaken marriage. As Ted Olson, the uber-conservative lawyer who argued the case against Prop 8 in Judge Walker’s court told Fox’s Chris Matthews, the Supreme Court has on fourteen separate occasions determined marriage to be a fundamental right that cannot be limited on arbitrary bases such as skin color, religion and now, at last, sexual orientation.

White will have none of it.

But even the highest court in the land cannot change this fundamental fact of life, that a mother and father bound together by the commitment of marriage is essential for sustaining a society's health and future.

This is may be a fundamental fact of White’s life, but of nature and the world? Of the history of the human race? Those fundamental facts tell us, unequivocally, that White either has no idea what he is talking about, and that he is wrong on the facts, or that he does know, argues otherwise, and is simply stupid.

One last bit of wrong-headedness from White. Remember, the passage of Measure 36 gave those in the Oregon Legislature little other choice as they tried to establish what justice they could following the wrong and stupid vote of Oregonians:

To recognize these indisputable facts isn't bigotry. And it doesn't mean that other family arrangements don't deserve respect and support. They absolutely do. This is why in 2007 the Oregon Legislature passed a law ensuring that same-sex couples have solid family benefits such as inheritance rights, joint tax filings, child-rearing and custody rights, joint health, auto and homeowners insurance and medical visitations, to name a few.

In this country, we have a name for the arrangement codified by the Legislature: Separate but equal.

A practice that is both wrong and stupid.