LA TIMES Op-Ed On Olson-Boies Prop 8 Lawsuit

The Sunday Los Angeles Times published an op-ed titled "Gay Pride and Prejudice" about the Olson-Boies federal lawsuit Perry vs Schwarzenegger challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the initiative constitutional amendment which banned future marriages for same-sex couples when passed by voters in November 2008.

TheTimes is worried that the legal skirmish may get ugly:

In legal filings this month, attorneys seeking to overturn Proposition 8 indicated that they would bring in expert witnesses to testify that sexual orientation is inborn and immutable, that homosexuality is not considered a disorder by the psychological or medical establishments (the American Psychiatric Assn. took it off the diagnostic list 36 years ago) and so forth. The testimony is intended to show that homosexuality deserves the same high-level constitutional protections as, for example, race.

That's understandable, given that members of a racial group are the most familiar example of a "discrete and insular" minority deserving of judicial protection. But homosexuality need not be innate or unchangeable for gays and lesbians to deserve equal treatment under the Constitution. Religious minorities, for instance, enjoy full constitutional protections,even though they are free to convert to other faiths. Indeed, a famous footnote in a 1938 Supreme Court case specifically recognized that laws intended to discriminate based on national origin or religious faith might offend the Constitution just as those that target groups by race. It is no less offensive morally or legally to discriminate against Catholics, who choose their faith, than it is to discriminate against blacks, who are born to their race.

Because of that, gays and lesbians need not prove that their sexual orientation is a matter of genetics in order for the Constitution to protect their equality. Nor is that the stronger tactic; both sides can bring forth expert witnesses to press their claims in this area. Yet, as absurd as it is to argue that sexual orientation is a matter of simple choice, lawyers defending the proposition have made clear that they intend to offer precisely that argument. In so doing, they threaten to trivialize discrimination against homosexuals by implying that gays and lesbians could end it merely by changing their sexual orientation.

It's could get ugly, but then that's to be expected. As Californians well remember, the political and legal debates over gay marriage already have exposed raw emotions and featured willful, hateful distortions. During last year's campaign, there were assertions that only married heterosexual couples could raise truly well-adjusted children -- a claim that ignored nontraditional families, including same-sex parents and single parents, who were successfully raising fine offspring. Commercials for Proposition 8 wrongly implied that same-sex marriage would somehow harm traditional marriages; that religious groups would be forced to conduct same-sex wedding ceremonies; that schools would have to teach a pro-homosexual curriculum in elementary grades; and that faith-based adoption agencies would go out of business. The campaign against the initiative never responded effectively to these deceptive claims; the trial, it appears, might offer a supervised forum for knocking them down.

Hmmm, I'm willing to take that risk. I believe that the facts and science support the position that homosexuality is just as natural as heterosexuality.