They’re upping the a…

They’re upping the ante again. First, same-sex marriage advocates did an end-run around the legislature to the courts. Those opposed met them on that field and trounced them handily. In Nebraska, the state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage got 70% of the vote. Augustine at RedState.org notes that those in favor are now taking their case to the feds. He quotes Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning who testified about this to the Senate Judiciary Committee

In 2000, more than 70% of Nebraskans voted to amend the Nebraska Constitution to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. In 2003, the ACLU and Lambda Legal Foundation together sued Nebraska in federal court, arguing that the Nebraska amendment unconstitutionally denies gay and lesbian persons equal access to the political system. This is the first federal court challenge to a state’s DOMA law.

My office moved to dismiss the suit, but last November, the Court denied our motion to dismiss. The language in the Court’s order signals that Nebraska will very likely lose the case at trial.

Thus Democrats who sang the “will of the people” song in an extremely tightly contested 2000 presidential election are now willing to ignore a landslide vote to force their will on a vast majority of Americans. You know, of course, that when they get met on that field, they’ll complain and sue and everything, just like they did at the state level, but that’s OK. We can take their childishness in stride and continue the fight. Bruning sums it up.

Unfortunately, in spite of efforts in states such as Nebraska to preserve the traditional definition of marriage, recent court rulings have created a legal domino effect that may impose a national policy on gay marriage.

I am not here to debate with you the moral issue of whether same sex marriage is right or wrong. I am here because of the reality that four judges in Massachusetts could eventually invalidate Nebraska’s ban on same sex marriages.

In short, I believe the people of the United States would prefer to have policy decided by their elected representatives, and not by appointed judges.

They would, and they’ve done everything by the rules. When gay rights activists and the ACLU change the rules, we’ve adapted and won (receiving the requisite name calling). Now they’re changing them again. It’s time to either get the judiciary to wake up, or we’ll just have to adapt again. I fear it’ll have to be the latter. I hate chipping away further and further at states’ rights, but the ACLU would rather fight one battle than 50, and states’ rights are the biggest impediment to that. In their eyes, we ought to have one-size-fits-all laws, and that’s just a recipe for disaster.

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