Nice folks

Those nice folks who want to protect the "institution of marriage" have taken to being not so nice in their tactics to try to stop the courts from overturning laws that ban same-sex marriage.

The National Organization for Marriage -- now doesn't that sound nice? -- has become vicious, and they're going after the judges who decide these cases. That almost seems un-American -- except I guess they're just exercising their all-American right to free speech.

Here's what they've done:

1. They attacked the sexual orientation of the judge who ruled that California's Proposition 8 was unconstitutional because it denied equal rights to a group of citizens. They wanted to have him declared disqualified and invalidate his judicial judgment based on his perceived (not acknowledged) identity as a gay man. This was not a surreptitious whisper campaign; it was an out and out frontal attack.

2. Although not located in Iowa, NOM organized and funded a campaign to unseat three judges who were part of the unanimous decision that allows same-sex marriage in Iowa. Judges are not elected in Iowa, but at the end of an appointed term, they are up for a "retention vote" -- a sort of vote of confidence/no confidence. Almost unprecedented, these three judges lost the vote for being retained for another term. And the only, only issue that was even mentioned was the vote on the same-sex marriage issue. Sounds Mafia-like in its vindictiveness. And it wasn't even Iowans themselves who organized this; it came from out of state NOM.

3. Now they have organized a campaign trying to disqualify one of the three federal appeals court judges hearing the appeal of the Prop8 issue today -- on the basis that the judge's wife works for an organization that opposes Prop8. If that disqualifies a judge, then Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is in deep trouble.

Where does this lead? Directly away from "an independent judiciary," that's for sure, if judges have to think about losing their jobs because of a specific vote on a specific case. And now that political money can flow unimpeded wherever it will, we're at risk for having a Judiciary that's bought and paid for, just like Congress.

Now who is un-American? NOM is the one with the wrong values.

Ralph

PS: Any organization that has Maggie Gallagher as a spokesperson can't be much good. She is a silly, stupid woman who used to write a column in the AJC. She is an anti-gay fanatic.