Alliance Defense Fund Strikes another blow against the ACLU
You may remember backing February of 2004, the Mayor of San Francisco and a county clerk issued “pseudo marriage licenses” to same sex couples, despite existing statutes prohibiting such. The California Supreme Court then ruled the that Mayor had acted illegally and nullified the marriage licenses.
Even though the California Supreme Court acted on this specific instance, the issue of same sex Marriage continued though the California court system, to be finally decided this week.
From the ADF press release:
The California Court of Appeal overturned a San Francisco County Superior Court judge and ruled that the state’s Defense of Marriage Act (Proposition 22) –- defining marriage as between one man and one woman — is constitutional. ADF Senior Counsel Glen Lavy argued in favor of marriage before the court.
The court wrote: “Courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution as marriage. The role of the judiciary is not to rewrite legislation to satisfy the court’s, rather than the legislature’s, sense of balance and order….In other words, judges are not free to rewrite statutes to say what they would like, or what they believe to be better social policy.”
I wish more courts would recognize the distinction this court put so well.
You can find the full text of the ruling here.
http://www.telladf.org/UserDocs/Prop22opinion.pdf
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