Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 14th, 2014 11:08 pm by HL
Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage
…and there’s not much to show for it.
The post Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage appeared first on ThinkProgress.
CREDIT: AP Photo/Jeff Chiu
So far, taxpayers in Idaho have spent $71,477 for the state to defend its ban on same-sex marriage. Most of that chunk has gone directly to Monte Neil Stewart, a private attorney contracted to prepare briefs and represent the state during arguments. Stewart’s contract charged $250 an hour, with a maximum charge of $57,000 — which was met.
That money has not been particularly well spent. Back in May, a federal judge overturned Idaho’s marriage bans, concluding that these laws “deny its gay and lesbian citizens the fundamental right to marry and relegate their families to a stigmatized, second-class status without sufficient reason for doing so.”
This past week, the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments in the state’s appeal. The particularly liberal three-judge panel included Judge Stephen Reinhardt, who previously established that laws that target sexual orientation must be examined with “heightened scrutiny” to ensure that they aren’t violating the gay community’s equal protection under the Constitution. And Stewart’s performance was not particularly convincing.
During the arguments, Stewart kept asserting that the state is trying to maintain a “child bonding right.” If it were to recognize same-sex couples’ unions as marriages, he claimed, “It is Idaho’s sensible prediction that men… will weaken in their commitment to abide by the child’s bonding norm.” When asked why, if so concerned about man-woman marriage, Idaho doesn’t ban divorce, Stewart explained that no-fault divorce cannot be walked back, but said that the state is trying to avoid “more damage” to the institution of marriage. In his conclusion, he held up a poster featuring a young person holding her parents’ hands and asked, “Which is unnecessary, a mother or a father?”
Stewart is also defending same-sex marriage bans in Utah and in Nevada. In Nevada, where he represents a private conservative group instead of the state, he has made some particularly troubling arguments. In a brief filed in January, Stewart directly compared the marriage equality movement to those who tried to ban interracial marriage, alleging that both tried “to bend that institution” into a “new and foreign role.”
In another brief filed in May, he told the Ninth Circuit that any “practice” that was in place when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified should be up held. Though that would work for his cause of limiting marriage to a man and a woman, it would also allow the government to discriminate against women, it would allow schools to be racially segregated, and it would actually allow for those bans on interracial marriage Stewart claims to oppose.
The post Idaho Has Spent Over $70,000 Defending Its Ban On Same-Sex Marriage appeared first on ThinkProgress.