http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/06/05/Same-Sex-Marriage-Becomes-Constitutional-Right-in-California
... California was one of the states preserving traditional marriage. First came Proposition 22, which the voters of California adopted as a referendum in 2000. But in 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled 4–3 that Proposition 22 violated the California Constitution. So the citizens of the Golden State acted yet again, enacting Proposition 8 to amend the California Constitution, reaffirming marriage as one man and one woman.
Then a new lawsuit was filed, arguing that this part of the California Constitution violates the U.S. Constitution because the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage, despite the fact that the word “marriage” never appears in the Federal Constitution and those who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 would be astounded to learn that this amendment—which was intended to stop racial discrimination after the Civil War—was also rewriting the definition of marriage.
Yet the case went before a homosexual federal district judge in San Francisco who has contemplated marrying his partner, who predictably decided that he had a constitutional right to do so and Californians could not amend their state constitution to the contrary. From there it went to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the most liberal of the federal appeals courts.
At the Ninth Circuit, a three-judge panel including two of the most liberal judges in America—Stephen Reinhardt and Michael Hawkins—ruled 2–1 that the district court was correct. They wrote an opinion narrowing the district court’s decision, however, noting that during the months before Proposition 8 was adopted, thousands of same-sex couples got marriage licenses in California. The panel held that this case concerned whether such marriage licenses could be invalidated after the fact, and that such an invalidation is what would be unconstitutional.
Charles Cooper, lead counsel for the defenders of traditional marriage in this case of Perry v. Brown, petitioned the full Ninth Circuit to rehear the case en banc, meaning that the case would go before an eleven-judge panel for reconsideration. Today the Ninth Circuit voted against rehearing the case.
Dissenting from the denial, Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain—an appointee of Ronald Reagan who is regarded as one of the best appellate judges in America—wrote an opinion for several of his colleagues criticizing this decision. Noting that President Barack Obama’s recent endorsement of gay marriage included a statement that he believes states are free to decide this issue rather than the federal government, Judge O’Scannlain opined:
“Today our court has silenced such a respectful conversation. Based on a two-judge majority’s gross misapplication of [1996 Supreme Court precedent], we have now declared that animus [i.e., hostile intentions] must have been the only conceivable motivation for a sovereign State to have remained committed to a definition of marriage that has existed for millennia. Even worse, we have overruled the will of seven million California Proposition 8 voters based on a reading of [Supreme Court precedent] that would be unrecognizable to the Justices who joined it, to those who dissented from it, and to the judges from [other federal courts] who have since interpreted it. We should not have so roundly trumped California’s democratic process without at least discussing this unparalleled decision in an en banc court.” ...
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence
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