PROPOSITION 8 JUDGE WALKER: TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE IS IRRATIONAL

The 417,000 Riverside County citizens and 655,000 San Diego County citizens who voted for Proposition 8 are irrational—plus all major civilizations that ever existed. That’s the essential message in Federal Judge Vaughan Walker’s 136-page tome that dismissed the decision of over 7 million Californians in November of 2008.

According to this black-robed demigod, Proposition 8 "fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples."

The gay judge proceeds to list what he deems the assured findings of psychology and sociology about the beneficial effects of gay marriage—ignoring the fact that these studies are often conducted by persons with a vested interest in their outcome, are generally done on a very small scale, and are necessarily devoid of large-scale longitudinal studies about the effects of gay marriage on children and society.

Were the judge the wise philosopher-king he thinks he is, he might have heeded the warning of Peter Berger, a prominent sociologist who declared that his academic specialty is “an intrinsically debunking discipline that should be congenial to nihilists, cynics, and other fit subjects for police surveillance.”

Put otherwise, it isn’t hard to come up with answers you insist upon finding. All you need to do is construct an investigative tool that leads to answers that comport with standards the researcher already embraces.

Using this procedure researchers “discover” that children raised in homosexual homes are “more tolerant” (of homosexuality) than kids raised in traditional homes. Other studies once conveniently found that a gay household had no effect on a child’s sexuality. Now some say it does, but that doesn’t matter.

In the process one ignores, as Judge Vaughan does, all evidence to the contrary, including probable deleterious effects of the social innovation proposed.

The opposing evidence is so obvious that only a sustained, decades-long process of social brainwashing by the media and academia could blind one to its relevance: Marriage is intrinsically related to natural procreation, fidelity, and the raising of families. Children benefit from a stable family with a father and a mother. Both fathers and mothers bring irreplaceable qualities to the raising of a child. There’s lots more.

George Orwell observed that some ideas are so absurd only an intellectual could believe them. Given time and repetition, however, almost half the population of a once-moral nation now embraces the ridiculous notion that making legal distinctions between male and female when it comes to marriage is “irrational.”

E-VERIFY: A BORDER HEAD FAKE

Now that federal Judge Susan Bolton has put on hold the most controversial provisions of Arizona’s new immigration law, cities that have taken their own measures to discourage illegal immigration may be having second thoughts.

Temecula, Menifee, and other city councils have recently passed ordinances that will require businesses to verify their workers are in the country legally. The method prescribed for checking immigration status is the federal government’s own E-Verify program—“an Internet-based system that compares information from an employee’s Form I-9 … to data from U.S. Department of Homeland Security and Social Security Administration records to confirm employment eligibility.”

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website proudly declares that this mostly voluntary system is currently being used by “more than 200,000 employers.” It adds that “most employers in Arizona and Mississippi are required to use E-Verify” as well as some (but not all) employers with federal contracts.

Put in context, 200,000 is fewer than the number of businesses in Los Angeles County. So the boast that 1,000 new businesses are signing up each week means that in another year the system will cover the hiring equivalent of the nation’s largest county. At that rate the country’s estimated six million firms with employees will all be E-Verified in about a century.

There’s the rub. Cities that passed ordinances requiring E-Verify assumed that the existence of a federal verification system meant the feds wouldn’t object to mandatory implementation of that system. Yet if that were the case the Obama administration wouldn’t be aiming its legal guns at Arizona, whose SB 1070 largely mirrors federal law. Instead, they would be targeting sanctuary cities.

The real problem the White House has with Arizona is that the state takes federal immigration laws seriously. Similarly, states and cities that mandate E-Verify may eventually find themselves on the wrong side of legal suits directed by Obama’s Justice Department or its private legal arm, the ACLU, if such mandates become widespread and effective.

After all, if Arizona’s law requiring police to inquire about immigration status in the course of other enforcement actions is deemed an unacceptable burden on “lawfully present aliens because their liberty will be restricted while their status is checked,” a similar argument could be made on behalf of individuals whose employment is affected by E-Verify issues.

That an opponent of E-Verify at a Temecula rally openly declared her husband was in the country illegally shows how unserious the feds really are about “unauthorized employment.” I’ll wager the lady’s husband will be deported when E-Verify is mandatory throughout the country—i.e. not soon, if ever.