ADF Planning Lawsuit Against NY Governor

It seems the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is planning to file a lawsuit against New York Governor David Paterson for trying to go around the legislature in ordering New York agencies to prepare to recognize homosexual "marriage" from other states...even though such a concept remains illegal in New York.

I missed this one last week, but the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy has brought it to light. They point to New York Times piece from Saturday:

“This is directly the province of the Legislature,” Mr. Raum said. “The Court of Appeals said marriage in New York is one man, one woman. And if that’s going to change, it has to come from the Legislature. What Paterson is doing is circumventing that process.”

This is what the 2006 decision says:

We hold that the New York Constitution does not compel recognition of marriages between members of the same sex. Whether such marriages should be recognized is a question to be addressed by the Legislature.

Gov. Paterson claims he did this because the New York Appellate Division said a few months ago that there is "no legal impediment" to changing the definition of "marriage."

From Associated Press:

The appellate judges determined that there is no legal impediment in New York to the recognition of a same-sex marriage. The state Legislature "may decide to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages solemnized abroad," the ruling said. "Until it does so, however, such marriages are entitled to recognition in New York."

This New York appellate decision actually says a couple of other things that should be noted:

there is no positive law in this jurisdiction” to prohibit recognition of a marriage that would have been invalid if solemnized in New York

In other words, the fundamental order of nature and thousands of years of established and unquestioned precedent are irrelevant if something isn't specifically prohibited.

Another interesting finding of this court:

The natural law exception also is not applicable. That exception has generally been limited to marriages involving polygamy or incest or marriages “offensive to the public sense of morality to a degree regarded generally with abhorrence” (May, 305 NY at 493), and that cannot be said here.

Really? I think there would be millions of Americans and millions of New Yorkers who would find the concept of calling a homosexual union a "marriage" (placing a homosexual relationship on a level plain with the sanctity, beauty and functionality of marriage) even more morally abhorrent than they might find the act itself. Simply because these judges are so morally adrift that they have no sense of right and wrong does not mean the public is as lost as these judges are.

It seems our courts are becoming accomplished contortion artists. No wonder California Supreme Court Justice Marvin R. Baxter called the recent California Supreme Court decision "legal jujitsu" because the court majority used a contorted legal interpretation to effect a situation where "the Legislature's own weight is used against it to create a constitutional right from whole cloth, defeat the People's will, and invalidate a statute otherwise immune from legislative interference."

There is nothing in New York law or constitution providing a foundation to redefine marriage to include two men or two women. In fact, New York law makes reference to men and women, brides and grooms, husbands and wives, clearing indicating an assumption and expectation that the parties are male and female. Yet this appellate division decision finds justification to ignore nature, thousands of years of precedent, and the legislature to redefine a fundamental human relationship?

Legal jujitsu, indeed!

And Gov. Paterson uses this unfounded decision from the appellate court to usurp the role of the legislature to declare homosexual "marriage?" More legal jujitsu!

We as a society asked for this when we moved away from absolute truth. When you abandon objective truth, anything that can be dreamed up by those in power can be justified.

We said some 16 years ago, when America elected a man (Bill Clinton) we knew was amoral and a demonstrable liar, that "character doesn't matter."

Guess what? When "character doesn't matter," it isn't confined to philandering and lying about smoking pot. It DOES affect how people lead and govern, and we are reaping the crop we sowed back then.

It it isn't even going to stop with things like "hate crimes" and the subsequent loss of our freedoms of speech and religion. The character deficit results in outright assaults on things even more fundamental than these freedoms.

Catholic Online quotes New York State Catholic Conference Executive Director Richard E. Barnes summarizing the fundamental issue as well as anything I've seen:

“As we have said many times,” Barnes said, “the definition of marriage pre-dates recorded history. No single politician or court or legislature should attempt to redefine the very building block of our society in a way that alters its entire meaning and purpose. The state has a compelling interest in holding up marriage between one man and one woman as the societal model. What our biblical ancestors knew instinctively holds true today: Marriage between a man and a woman is the best way to assure the stable rearing of children and the flourishing of society. It should not be treated as simply one more lifestyle choice, equal to any other, because it is not.”

While saying homosexual men and women must be treated with dignity and should not be targeted by unjust discrimination, Barnes said that, “just as the state cannot declare a man to be a ‘mother’ or a woman to be a ‘father,’ it cannot declare a same-sex union to be a ‘marriage.’”

One can only hope that the same morally bankrupt court system which brought about this situation can find it in itself to wake up and realize the truth when a group like the ADF rubs it's nose in it.