Suit Filed Challenging Pennsylvania DOMA - Attorney General Won’t Defend "Unconstitutional" Law

Making good on its promise, the ACLU filed suit today in federal court challenging Pennsylvania's anti-gay DOMA law.  The ACLU has promised to file suits shortly in both Virginia and North Carolina challenging those state's anti-gay state constitutional amendments.  Here in Virginia, a new poll shows that 55% of Virginians now support gay marriage.  That, of course will mean nothing to self-loathing closet case, Attorney General/GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli who will no doubt defend Virginia's animus based amendment and dutifully following orders dictated to him by the Christofascists at The Family Foundation.   But back to Pennsylvania.  Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane (pictured above) has said that she will not defend the statute because it is "wholly unconstitutional" in the wake of the holding in United States v. Windsor.  Now, the question is whether or not GOP Governor Tom Corbett will step forward to defend the anti-gay law.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

Pennsylvania attorney general Kathleen Kane announced Thursday afternoon she will not defend the state in a federal lawsuit filed this week challenging the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, calling the prohibition “wholly unconstitutional.”

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit Tuesday on behalf of 23 Pennsylvania residents, including 10 couples, a widow and two children, naming Kane and the state’s Republican Gov. Tom Corbett as defendants. Kane’s move, announced to reporters at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center, places the burden of defending the law on the governor’s general counsel. Corbett supports the prohibition on same-sex marriage, which passed the state legislature in 1996.
“If there is a law that I feel that does not conform with the Pennsylvania state constitution and the U.S. Constitution, then I ethically cannot do that as a lawyer,” she said.

Thomas Peters, spokesman for the National Organization for Marriage, said Kane’s refusal to defend the ban represented a sort of “pocket veto” of the law.

Kane framed her decision both in terms of her constitutional obligations and her commitment to Pennsylvania residents, saying that in a choice between defending the law and serving the public, “I choose you.”

Mary Catherine Roper, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said she and others involved in the lawsuit were “celebrating” in the wake of Kane’s announcement.

“To have the highest law enforcement official of the Commonwealth come out and say, ‘I agree with you, this law is unjust, that’s huge for us,’” Roper said in a phone interview, her voice audibly emotional.

However the the state GOP chairman Rob Gleason released a statement calling it “unacceptable for Attorney General Kathleen Kane to put her personal politics ahead of her taxpayer-funded job by abdicating her responsibilities.”

As a licensed attorney of over 35 years, I believe that Kane has taken the ethically correct posture.  As an attorney - which she is - she is ethically bound NOT to make false and fraudulent arguments to the Court.  With the decision in Windsor so clearly zeroing in on the anti-gay animus that was behind the federal DOMA law - the same type of anti-gay animus that was behind both the Pennsylvania law and the constitutional amendments in Virginia and North Carolina - to defend such a law law that is based on nothing but animus and extreme religious beliefs could theoretically expose an attorney to sanctions by the Court and disciplinary actions by the applicable state bar.  Not that such concerns will constrain Ken Cuccinelli and similar Christofascists who deem themselves above the laws and rules that govern the rest of us.   Religious belief has no place in the civil laws of the states or the nation.

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Christianists - The Real Threat to American Democracy

Despite the much repeated lie of the Christofascists that America was founded as a "Christian nation" all the facts point to the opposite conclusion.  Virtually all of the leading founding fathers were skeptics of organized religion and might be best described as Deists.  Moreover, they all respected education, science and knowledge and recognized that the world was not static and unchanging and that America would need to change with the times.  It's a mindset and view that is diametrically opposed to the agenda of today's Christofascists who embrace ignorance, reject science and seek to trample on the religious freedoms of others in order to impose their own fear and hate based vision of society on all.  What is even more disturbing is the fact that these ignorance worshiping, anti-democracy elements now control the Republican Party.   In an interview with The National Review, the always bovine and anti-liberty for all (and self-enriching) Maggie Gallagher exposes this mindset in a rant in the wake of the U. S. Supreme Court's gay marriage rulings.  She accuses Justice Kennedy of issuing a fatwa against Christians, yet is Gallagher and her allies that have issued a fatwa against anyone and everyone who refuses to knuckle under to them.  The woman, in my view, is mentally ill.  Here are interview highlights: 

MAGGIE GALLAGHER: What you are really asking is: Will we concede the legitimacy of Kennedy’s fatwa against us, or will we respond with a sustained opposition — legal, political, cultural, and of the moral imagination?

I don’t believe in inevitability, I believe in human freedom and our power to shape the future. So it depends on us. But certainly I believe, as I wrote in the Los Angeles Times, that the questions raised by marriage — deeply rooted in our conception of who we are as men and women, the meaning of sexuality and gender — cannot be put to rest by the power of five lawyers on however high a court.

The cultural struggle I predicted in “Banned in Boston” is clearly playing out. Will they succeed in persuading us to accept the second-class status Kennedy lays out for us?   Not me, what about you?

Note how in Gallagher's warped mind not being able to force one's views on all equates to "second class status."  Meanwhile, in 29 states gays can be fired at will and face duiscrimination because of people like Gallagher.  The piece goes on:

GALLAGHER: The legal implications are vast. I think this is, in fact, Roe v. Wade. The majority on the Supreme Court has clearly accepted that our Founding Fathers guaranteed us all a right to gay marriage in our Constitution, and is just prudentially biding its time — probably two to three years at most — before a case with clear standing gets in Justice Kennedy’s hands.

Already Kennedy has refused to accept for review a case in Arizona limiting marriage benefits to married couples. A Michigan federal judge also ruled our Constitution requires giving marriage benefits to non-married same-sex partners.

I think we are now in the post-Roe phase. Will we accede to the Court’s right to rule our values on marriage or not? And of course into the ever-more-intense religious-freedom phase.

I don’t think gay marriage is inevitable. But if the Supreme Court imposes it, of course it will happen.

With Kennedy’s judgment, and his contempt of dissent, we’ve entered into a new era of the relationships between the American political order and traditional Judeo-Christian moral views.

There's more blather, but you get the drift.  Gallagher and her kind have no problem with the imposition of beliefs and  social views as long as they are the ones doing the imposing on others.  No one has more contempt for the rights of others or is more self-centered and selfish than today's "godly folk" who make the case of why conservative Christianity needs to die.

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Christianists Vow To Defy Supreme Court If It Rules For Marriage Equality

It yet another display that they believe themselves to be above the civil laws and that their rights should trump those of everyone else, some 200 Christofascists are vowing to defy the rulings of the U. S. Supreme Court should it hand down decisions supportive of gay marriage.  With the Christofascists, it is always first and last all about them and their demand that they have the unfettered right to mistreat and discriminate against others of differing beliefs, and all too often, different skin colors.  The Christofascists have truly made Christianity into something ugly and contrary to the principles of the Founding Fathers.  Think Progress looks at this mindset which is akin to that of the hardcore segregationists who sought to defy Supreme Court rulings in the 1950's and 1960's.  The list of those issuing the threat comprises a who's who of hate group leaders and far right Republicans.  Here are article excerpts:

Drawing what they called a line “we cannot and will not cross,” more than 200 conservative activists released a letter Thursday vowing to ignore any U.S. Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples. The signers include prominent anti-LGBT activists and major figures from the national conservative movement.

Circulated by Liberty Counsel Action chairman Mat Staver and Common Good Alliance chairman Deacon Keith Fournier, under the banner of the equally ironically named Freedom Federation, the statement bore the title, “We Stand in Solidarity to Defend Marriage and the Family and Society Founded Upon Them.” After arguing that same-sex marriage goes against “natural moral law,” the signers claim that the Supreme Court has “no authority to redefine marriage,” writing:

As the Supreme Court acknowledged in the 1992 decision of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, its power rests solely upon the legitimacy of its decisions in the eyes of the people. If the Supreme Court were to issue a decision that redefined marriage or provided a precedent on which to build an argument to redefine marriage, the Supreme Court will thereby undermine its legitimacy. The Court will significantly decrease its credibility and impair the role it has assumed for itself as a moral authority. It will be acting beyond its proper constitutional role and contrary to the Natural Moral Law which transcends religions, culture, and time.

Worse, the letter ends with a clear threat that conservatives will refuse to comply with any court ruling in support of marriage equality: “[M]ake no mistake about our resolve. While there are many things we can endure, redefining marriage is so fundamental to the natural order and the true common good that this is the line we must draw and one we cannot and will not cross.”

In addition to designated hate group leaders like Family Research Council president Tony Perkins and Traditional Values Coalition chairman Rev. Louis Sheldon, the list included Tea Party activist Ben Carson, Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern (R), former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell (R), former Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer, . . . . , Focus on the Family founder Rev. James Dobson, birther Joseph Farah, and disgraced Abramoff scandal figure Ralph Reed.

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