Judge Vaughn's Brilliant Ruling and the Ridiculous Right Response
Yesterday's ruling by Federal Judge Vaughn Walker that California's blatantly illegal attempt to deprive citizens of rights based solely on their sexual preference was one of the most cogent and thorough pieces of legal writing I've ever read. And I have a law degree, which means only that I've read a lot of briefs and rulings over the years. He picked out 80 facts from the two-week-plus trial over which he presided and methodically and rationally dissected each of them. His logic is unassailable. And the ruling is so well written that it doesn't take a legal degree or background to read it and understand it. He clearly understood that he was deciding a case with major consequences throughout the nation and he wanted to issue an air-tight ruling.
He did just that.
I applaud His Honor for the courage to make the only decision that could be defended against a law that was so heinously irresponsible that it was unabashedly anti-American. As Rachel Maddow said on her MSNBC news show last night, rights are not supposed to be subject to a vote. That's why they are called "rights." Rights are part of our inherent nature. Those who believe rights should be subject to arbitrarily whimsical overrule by a tyrannical majority would be the first to scream if their religious liberty or their freedom of speech were overruled by a majority that found them distasteful.
And the Right, as if to prove how shabby is its reasoning, how baseless is its opinion, how un-American is their belief, lashes out at Judge Walker for what one of their leading spokesman called a "sign of a "Soviet-style" government takeover. Only someone who has no clue about history, no accurate view of the old Soviet Union and its practices, could conjure up such a ludicrous charge. This judge was appointed to the bench by one of the Right's adored heroes, George H. W. Bush. The case against the proposition was argued by two great American lawyers who agree on almost nothing else, one from the Right and one from the Left. For someone who disagrees with the ruling merely because she doesn't like it and not on the basis of logic, reasoning or law, to use that kind of language about the ruling just reveals the complete emptiness of the rhetoric of the Right on this whole matter.
It seems crystal clear to me that these two pieces of communication side by side epitomize the whole essence of the Right-Left battle going on in this country. The left offers detailed insights and analysis based on law and logic. The right counters with bumper-sticker slogans that are blatantly and provably false, designed to do only one thing: scare those who hear the message. This is a clear case of love vs. fear. Love has won, at least for the moment. I predict that it will be monumentally difficult for the Supreme Court, where this case is surely headed, will be unable to find any legal or logical basis on which to overturn Judge Walker, and that it will do so anyway. Because it has become a tool of the Right. I further predict that once the Supremes do the Right Pretzel Twist, history will judge them as the worst set of majority justices since Dred Scott.
Other than that, I have no strong feelings on the subject. :-)
