‘Razing’ Arizona
Family
Research Council, July 22, 2003
By Colin Stewart, Executive Vice President
The first fallout from last month’s Supreme Court
decision striking down Texas’s anti-sodomy law is being felt in Arizona. Two
homosexual men have filed a special action in the Arizona Court of Appeals
seeking to have the Grand Canyon State’s law struck down that defines
marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The special action requires
the court to expedite its ruling. Unfortunately, the appeals court retained
jurisdiction and scheduled oral arguments, so the case is on the fast track.
The plaintiffs claim that last month’s Supreme Court decision held that
homosexuals have a “privacy” right to marriage. This is exactly what
Justice Antonin Scalia warned against in his ringing dissent. The Arizona case
joins similar court actions in Massachusetts and New Jersey seeking to
radically redefine marriage by allowing men to marry men and women to marry
women. The Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), FRC’s partner in an amicus brief
filing in the Texas case, has intervened on behalf of Arizona’s marriage
statute. ADF argues, correctly, that the plaintiffs vastly exaggerate the
significance of last month’s privacy ruling and notes the Supreme Court
repeatedly has upheld marriage as the union of one man and one woman. The
Arizona court should decline to stretch the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling far
beyond what was intended by invalidating the state’s marriage laws. Such an
action would transform the court into a despotic, rogue branch of government.
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