RSSThe Gay Battle Against the Will of the People, Part One
Gene Lalor | January 18, 2010
Reporting from San Francisco - A federal trial on same-sex marriage focused last Wednesday on the similarities and differences between homosexual and heterosexual couples, with a psychology professor citing “remarkable similarities.”
The purpose of that “federal trial” isn’t mentioned until the 3rd paragraph of Maura Dolan’s story about the psychologist’s testimony, namely ”attorneys for two same-sex couples who are trying to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 voter initiative that reinstated a state ban on same-sex marriage.”
Prop 8 is referred to twice more, including the last paragraph: “Earlier in the day, a Proposition 8 attorney got Yale historian George Chauncey to say that gays and lesbians have become politically and socially more powerful in recent years. But Chauncey also said that discrimination persists and described writings by a Proposition 8 proponent as evidence of long-held and inaccurate negative stereotypes:” http://bit.ly/5L3h85
Case closed? Not even close. The trial continues.
Aside from the question of why a constitutional proposition democratically passed by Californians would be an issue in contention a year later, what’s missing in such testimony is some clarification of the objectivity of the psychologist, “Letitia Peplau, an expert on couple relationships” and UCLA professor of social psychology and Mr. Chauncey, “a Yale historian.”
Of what use is testmony by biased witnesses?
Put more bluntly, are Letitia and Chauncey homosexuals? If so, it would have great bearing on what they say, no? Furthermore, absent objectivity, why are they even permitted to testify?
Apparently, the answer is no, since the question as to their sexual inclinations wasn’t asked.
A little Googling uncovered the truth about Chauncey.
It seems that Yale has become the “Gay Ivy” while no one was looking, a “gay-friendly campus” with a greater proportion of homosexuals than any other Ivy League school. Chauncey was one of its early professorial additions to gay studies: ”Yale history professor George Chauncey ‘77, ‘89PhD, is the author of, among other books, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.”
As he writes in the Yale Alumni Magazine, ”Yale hired me because of that scholarship, and I teach a lesbian and gay history lecture course every fall and a junior seminar every spring” where he also expounds on his view that “Yale has a remarkably rich and revelatory queer history.” He is positively giddy about the transformations in New Haven.
I’m just trying to keep the scorecard straight concerning that testimony about California’s Prop 8 and the question about Mr. Chauncey’s sexual identity seems relevant.
His enthusiasm and boundless affection for the new “Gay Yale” is detailed in his essay, “Gay at Yale, How Things Changed,” (http://bit.ly/W2nSd), which pretty much ices his gay cake.
Now onto Letitia.
Ms. Peplau hasn’t exactly exited her closet but there’s little need for her outing. In addition to her expertise on couple relationships, she has authored, co-authored, and edited various books on “Social Psychology,” including Women’s Sexualities : New Perspectives on Sexual Orientation and Gender, Gender, Culture, and Ethnicity: Current Research About Women and Men,
According to a “Lesbian Dating and Relationships” blogsite, she told the trial judge “her opinion that allowing same-sex marriage would not damage the institution, as Prop 8 supporters suggest. She noted that even if gay marriage is allowed, only about 2 percent of all marriages in the nation would be same-sex.”
She added, “I think it would have no impact on the stability of heterosexual couples,” at best a tangential issue in the trial.
After “sparring with Prop 8 lawyer Nicole Moss under cross-examination, feuding over data about gay marriage in Belgium,” plantiff expert Peplau concluded her testimony: http://bit.ly/EHa0j
Libertarians and homosexuals will object at this point, or at an earlier point, by asking who cares about anyone’s individual sexual proclivities, gender identification or vagaries, or what people do with their body parts. That’s a very valid question relating to, believe it or not, our system of government and the nature of democracy.
Some general background for the California trial:
Democracy is a flawed system of government susceptible to radical minorities seizing control and dominance, what Plato termed the nearest thing to anarchy.
Our founding fathers sought to avoid the negative features of democracy by establishing our nation not as a pure democracy–Who needs chaos and anarchy?–but as a democratic republic whereby elected representatives would reflect the will of the people without some segments dominating all political discusssion and establishing laws upholding their minority viewpoints.
That ingenious system has worked for over 200 years although some groups are always trying to impose minority opinions on the majority. To forestall such eventualities, our democratic republic installed checks and balances by which the majority could have their say.
Such an outlet was available to Californians in 2008 when, amid the Obama juggernaut, a surprising decision was reached by the people of that very liberal state. Proposition 8 read, very simply, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
By a vote of 52.5% to 47.5%, a margin of over half a million votes cast, Californians thereby changed their constitution to incorporate an amendment affirming the time-honored norm of marriage between one male person and one female person. No exceptions, including homosexuals, need apply.
No reference was made to the sacred nature of matrimony, which would have invited dissension from the church-state separationists, nor to the obvious necessity of promoting families and the conception of children as a societal requisite, nor to legalizing marriage between same-sex couples.
All of those were implicit.
A simple, single declarative sentence should have laid to rest any disputes, “should have” being the operative words.
Anyone who thought that would be a conclusion to the matter was woefully naive in the gender-charged climate of twenty-first century America, hence the complaint by the Gay Lobby which hopes to overturn the democratic will of the people by judicial fiat. 
More on the immediate reactions to Prop 8 and the bases for the trial in Part Two
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