Clueless

I just ran across this quote from B. Daniel Blatt, also known as "GayPatriot West," at Joe.My.God.

"Walker’s ruling, however, is not a policy brief, but a judicial decision striking down a popular provision in the California Constitution stipulating that the state only recognize unions between one man and one woman as 'marriages.' With his decision, the judge prevented the people from settling the controversial issue of how states could recognize same-sex couples and personally assuming the responsibility for determining how the state may regulate the unions it recognizes as married.

"To be sure, he makes a good case for gay marriage, but a lousy one for usurping the power from the people to decide this issue. In this sense, his ruling becomes a political boon for the GOP — as it can tie his decision to the increasing sense that our governing bodies (e.g., Congress and the various bureaucracies it has created) are disregarding the popular will as they make laws and set policy."

In the interest of fair play, here's a link to the full article.

I'm not going to deal with Blatt's full essay right now because I'm actually just taking a break from other things. It does seem on first reading, however, to be largely incoherent. (Granted, maybe it's not as bad as it seems, but I'll have to come back to it.)

However, just in this portion, Blatt makes a major error that he appears to have adopted wholesale from the anti-gay right, in his reference to the District Court "usurping the power of the people to decide this issue."

Y'know, I've got a copy of the Constitution sitting here on my desk, and I'm damned if I can find the part where it says the majority can rescind the fundamental rights of minorities by plebiscite. Nor have I ever run across a court decision affirming that right. I invite Dan to send me a citation from either the Constitution or the case law in support of his statement. (And I might note that Judge Walker does have precedent for his statement that in matters of fundamental rights, referenda are irrelevant.)

On top of everything else, the mere existence of the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, which enjoins the states from abridging those rights, as integral parts of the Constitution (under Article V) argues against Blatt's statement: these are fundamental rights that cannot be abridged or rescinded except by an amendment to the Constitution itself. The "will of the people" is in fact, as Judge Walker pointed out, irrelevant.

Blatt is also playing into the cheap mantra about "activist judges," although he doesn't use the term (which would make his essay even more of a cliche than it already is). Point of fact, however, regarding his last sentence: the federal judiciary is not a "federal bureaucracy" created by Congress -- it is a separate and co-equal branch of government created by the Founders. (Are we making a little bid for some Tea Bagger support here?)

I am just so tired of reading this kind of crap from people who know better, or should, and quite frankly, if Blatt doesn't want to be lumped with those cynical politicians masquerading as "family values" activists -- as in, Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher, Andrea Lafferty, and their ilk -- he should just drop this sort of thing.