PROTECT MARRIAGE

California Supreme Court considers arguments for and against Proposition 8.

On September 6, 2011, our legal team appeared in the California Supreme Court to make the case that we, as the Official Proponents of Prop 8 and the official campaign committee (ProtectMarriage.com/Yes on 8), have a legal right to defend Prop 8 since “the public officials charged with that duty refuse to do so.”

The hearing in the California Supreme Court was nothing less than FANTASTIC! Complete comments on the court hearing will be posted later, but for now the legal team states that most, if not all, of the Court's seven justices seemed to clearly side with our arguments!

At the same time, the justices seemed baffled by our opponents' extreme position. According to them, our opponents should be entitled to challenge a voter-passed measure and, upon convincing the State's Attorney General not to oppose the lawsuit, exclude the measure's official proponents from the courtroom - such that the majority of voters go completely unrepresented. As once justice said, "that just defies common sense."

The Courts' written ruling is expected within 90 days, and we still do not know for sure what the court will ultimately decide.

To rewind the tape and explain how we arrived at this, at least our 17th court appearance, recall that a little more than a year ago a federal judge (who was personally involved in his own decade-long same-sex relationship) declared Prop 8 and traditional marriage itself to be “unconstitutional.” We immediately appealed that misguided ruling to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Then, the Ninth Circuit passed the case back over to the California Supreme Court to decide whether or not we even have “legal standing” to defend Prop 8 in court.

This was a pivotal hearing for us as we continue to fight to uphold the People’s vote to restore traditional marriage in California against these ferocious attacks. We simply cannot allow our opponents to manipulate the legal system to the point where there is nobody left to defend the People! We are counting on your financial support so we can provide a full defense for Prop 8 and ensure that your voice is represented in this monumental legal battle.

Speaking of rewinding the tape, we were back in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to push back against our opponents’ latest attempt to intimidate and harass our allies. Specifically, the advocates for homosexual “marriage” are asking the lower court in San Francisco to release, to the media and the rest of the public, copies of a video tape of the three-week trial over Prop 8. Federal law prohibits the broadcasting of a federal trial anywhere beyond the courthouse itself, and when former judge Vaughn Walker attempted back then to broadcast the trial, we convinced the Supreme Court of the United States to intervene and put a stop to it.

Amazingly, our opponents are back at it again, this time pressuring the new judge who replaced Walker to release the tapes to the public notwithstanding the Supreme Court’s order prohibiting it! Have no doubt – their aim is to use those tapes to harass our witnesses who testified in favor of our case at trial, and discourage other supporters of traditional marriage from appearing as witnesses for us in future cases.

Activist Judge Thumbs His Nose at the U.S. Supreme Court

The new judge assigned to our case in the U.S. District Court, James Ware, issued an order this week to release to the public the sealed video tapes of last year’s trial. As described by the National Review Online, this action “caps an extraordinary series of steps in which former district judge Vaughn Walker and Ware have acted to evade the Supreme Court’s January 2010 ruling that blocked Walker’s unlawful effort to broadcast his anti-Prop 8 show trial.”

Last year before the start of trial, former judge Vaughn Walker announced his plans to illegally tape and broadcast the court proceedings. We appealed to the United States Supreme Court and – just moments before the start of the first day of trial – prevailed. By that time, under the threat of having their images plastered all over the airwaves and Internet, the majority of our expert witnesses refused to testify for fear of their personal safety and that of their families. Despite the Supreme Court’s intervention, former judge Walker taped the trial anyway, promising to use them only in his private chambers to help him decide the case. He then broke his promise, handing copies of the tapes to our opponents for use during closing arguments, and even showing portions of the trial in speeches after he retired from the bench… which were, in turn, repeatedly broadcast by CSPAN.

Later, our opponents asked Judge Ware to remove the “protective order” which had kept the trial videos under seal and release them to the general public for broadcasting. We thought there was no way Judge Ware could allow the tapes to be broadcast, considering the direct order of the U.S. Supreme Court not to do so, and the prior judge’s solemn promise that the tapes he made would never see the light of day.

Yet, in a bizarre twist, Judge Ware ordered the illegal tapes to be handed over to the media for public broadcast, in violation of the law and in defiance of our nation’s highest court. We immediately filed an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

National Review Online was perfectly on point by stating “Ware’s opinion…rewards [former judge] Walker’s contemptuous treatment of the Supreme Court’s January 2011 order. Walker’s and Ware’s actions are plainly inconsistent with the reasoning of the Supreme Court’s January 2010 order. The Supreme Court credited the witnesses’ fear of harassment and specifically stated that “witnesses subject to harassment as a result of broadcast of their testimony might be less likely to cooperate in any future proceedings.” Walker and Ware have done as much as possible to make that harassment a reality, yet Ware dismisses the effect on witnesses as “mere unsupported hypothesis or conjecture.”

On Monday, September 26, 2011 the Ninth Circuit GRANTED our motion and ordered that the trial videos remain under seal until the appellate court has time to consider the legality of the lower court’s action.

But this also presents a quandary. On the one hand, it would be great for the public to see firsthand the amazingly powerful case we presented at trial in defense of traditional marriage, in strong contrast to the major media’s warped accounts of the trial. On the other hand, we have a duty to protect our supporters and trial witnesses from the increased risk of violence and harassment that would naturally follow from broadcasting their testimony.

In a recent newspaper column opposing the release of the trial tapes, San Francisco Chronicle journalist Debra Saunders admits she has “a lot of sympathy for the idea of cameras in the courtroom.” However, she quotes former U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello saying he believes the entire reason for former judge Vaughn Walker’s recording the trial was not, as he solemnly promised in open court, for his personal use in deciding the trial, but was rather “to expose, and I use the term guardedly, the witnesses who testified against gay marriage.”
Read Walker's proclamation

And the risk of harm to supporters of traditional marriage is not just hypothetical. As recounted by the United States Supreme Court in this very case, supporters of Prop 8 “have been subject to harassment as a result of public disclosure of their support. For example, donors to groups supporting Proposition 8 ‘have received death threats and envelopes containing a powdery white substance.’ . . . and others have been forced to resign their jobs after it became public that they had donated to groups supporting the amendment . . . And numerous instances of vandalism and physical violence have been reported against those who have been identified as Proposition 8 supporters.” Read The U.S. Supreme Court Decision

We must protect our supporters and trial witnesses from the real threats of violence and harassment that would surely follow from the release of the trial video. And, we must hold our ground against our opponents’ relentless efforts, like this one, to intimidate and discourage our supporters from taking a public stand in defense of traditional marriage. So, we ask your continued financial support to help cover the costs of litigating this appeal in the Ninth Circuit.

After months of speculation that homosexual activists would bring the marriage issue back to the ballot in 2012 with an initiative to repeal Proposition 8, this week Equality California (California’s largest gay rights group which had previously led the “No on 8” campaign) announced that they will NOT pursue a fight at the ballot box in the coming election.

Instead, they decided to pin all their hopes on winning the current legal challenge in federal court, Perry v. Brown, to nullify the people’s vote for Prop 8.

And to show their determination to shift more resources toward overturning Prop 8 in the courts, Equality California (EQCA) also announced the departure of their recently hired executive director, who had been on the job for just three months and nine days. And as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle the gay rights group is making other deep cuts to their lobbying and field staff as well.

While it is good news that we will not have to wage an expensive campaign in the 2012 election to protect Prop 8, on the other hand it also means that the stakes are now higher than ever in the Perry v. Brown federal court case. The money and resources our opponents will save by not pushing their own ballot initiative will be used, instead, to increase funding for their courtroom litigation against Prop 8.

So let’s all breathe a short sigh of relief, but then solemnly commit to re-double our support for our Legal Defense Team’s work to provide a full and vigorous defense for the voters’ passage of Proposition 8. Our opponents have “bet the farm” on the success of their lawsuit, so please make a secure online donation by credit card today to make sure they lose that bet! Please be as generous as you can, and thank you in advance for your continued support.

Your donation is tax-deductible and confidential (your personal information will not be publicly disclosed). Please contribute today… Thank you! - Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund, P.O. Box 162849, Sacramento, California 95816-2849
Proposition * Legal Defense Fund

The cost of this high-profile litigation has been enormous. We have already incurred expenses of over $5 million, and we estimate that it will take at least another $3 million to fight this case all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. This summer, we found ourselves facing more than a $1 million litigation budget shortfall, as the litigation costs were outpacing the financial support coming in from supporters like you. Thankfully, many dedicated supporters like you dug deep and made special sacrificial contributions to help us reduce that deficit. On behalf of all of us, thank you for stepping forward with your financial sacrifice at that difficult time.

Until our next update, may God bless you and your family.
Sincerely, Andy Pugno, General Counsel, Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund

CA Supreme Court unanimously upholds our right to defend Prop 8!!!

On November 17, 2011, the California Supreme Court ruled UNANIMOUSLY to uphold our right, as the official proponents of Proposition 8, to defend the vote of over seven million Californians to restore traditional marriage in 2008! This victory is an ENORMOUS boost for traditional marriage, as well as the integrity of the initiative process itself!
The Court held:

“[W]e conclude that when public officials decline to defend a voter-approved initiative or assert the state’s interest in the initiative’s validity, under California law the official proponents of an initiative measure are authorized to assert the state’s interest in the validity of the initiative and to appeal a judgment invalidating the measure.”
The Court also exposed the obvious flaw in our opponents’ arguments, observing that denying us legal standing to defend Prop 8 would give politicians an illegal “veto” over the people’s initiative power:

“Neither the Governor, the Attorney General, nor any other executive or legislative official has the authority to veto or invalidate an initiative measure that has been approved by the voters. It would exalt form over substance to interpret California law in a manner that would permit these public officials to indirectly achieve such a result by denying the official initiative proponents the authority to step in to assert the state’s interest in the validity of the measure or to appeal a lower court judgment invalidating the measure...”

Meanwhile, this ruling is a HUGE disaster for the homosexual marriage extremists. The Supreme Court completely rejected our opponents’ demands that their lawsuit against Proposition 8 should proceed without any legal defense, and thus win by default! This is devastating for them because their entire legal strategy relied on finding a biased judge to rule in their favor, and then winning on appeal by keeping the voters completely unrepresented. Today that all crumbled before their eyes.

Today’s decision is a critical milestone in our three-year battle to uphold marriage between a man and a woman in California after the passage of Proposition 8. Now we can return our focus to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and our appeal to reverse the lower court’s decision declaring Proposition 8 and traditional marriage itself “unconstitutional.”

Yet, we are seriously behind in meeting our court costs and legal expenses, notwithstanding the hundreds of hours of work that have been graciously donated to this case by the attorneys on our Legal Defense Team.
While our opponents rake in millions of dollars from Hollywood and the rest of the ultra-liberal “elite” to bankroll their legal attacks, the fact is we have been scraping just to get by. We rely exclusively on the voluntary financial support of friends like you. We receive no public funding of any kind.

Unfortunately this shortfall of funds comes at a crucial time, as we must right now prepare for another round of arguments in the Ninth Circuit. The next hearing is in just a couple of weeks! So please take a moment to make a special donation today, toward directly defraying the costs of winning this case for traditional marriage, of $50, $100, $500 or even $1000 or whatever you can afford.

Every donation, no matter the size, is extremely helpful if everyone chips in. In fact, if every supporter receiving this email donates just $25, we could instantly pay off all of our outstanding bills and provide all the funding needed for the next stage in the Ninth Circuit!

I urgently hope you can help at this pivotal moment. Thank you in advance for your generosity.
Very truly yours, Andy Pugno, General Counsel