Focus on the Family today misinformed its readers about legal background to the Ninth Circuit ruling in Perry vs. Schwarzenegger against Proposition 8.
Instead of citing the actual ruling, Focus lawyer Bruce Hausknecht parroted ProtectMarriage.org’s hasty rationale for a stay. Hausknecht is most interested in the stay request’s reference to Adams v. Howerton, a 1982 immigration case involving a same-sex couple that was based not upon federal family law, but upon a 1952 immigration law’s definition of foreign spouse.
Seeing a flimsy opportunity for profit, Focus breathlessly concludes:
Apparently, the 9th Circuit has already decided as a matter of law that there is a “rational basis” for a duly-enacted law that favors heterosexual marriage over homosexual marriage.
In short, Hausknecht parrots a false precedent from a sister political organization’s distortion of an unrelated field of law, and presents the antiquated distortion of history as if it were accepted case law.
Hausknecht then insinuates that Judge Vaughn Walker has recklessly ignored immigration rulings that Focus incompetently claims are “binding” upon U.S. citizens — and that may well be found unconstitutional, as U.S. society has become less bigoted against citizen women, blacks, religious minorities, and legal immigrants since 1952.
Focus on the Family clearly wishes it were still 1952, when all people were equal — but only if they were white, male, Christian, and of European descent. Maybe if they close their eyes, open their wallets, pray in “tongues,” and shout such irrational pseudo-legal babble loud enough, then a miracle will happen, their wallets will fill up, and it will be 1952 when they open their eyes.
Crazier things have happened.
Oh. Wait. No, they haven’t.
