John Eastman, the Chairman of NOM, the National Organization For Marriage, called Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts‘ two adopted children the “second best option,” leaving many to infer that adopted children, and specifically Chief Justice Roberts’ children, are “second best.”
“You’re looking at what is the best course societywide to get you the optimal result in the widest variety of cases,” Eastman is quoted saying in an Associated Press article today examining the structure of the families of the nine Supreme Court justices. “That often is not open to people in individual cases. Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief Roberts’ family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option,” said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. Eastman also teaches law at Chapman University law school in Orange, Calif.”
The composition of the families of the SCOTUS justices “look a lot like the rest of America,” the AP article finds:
Members of the court have firsthand experience with divorce and adoption, as well as making it alone without ever getting married. Just five of the nine justices have been married once and have had biological children with their spouses.
These varied family portraits of the justices are somewhat at odds with the arguments of gay marriage opponents who stress the unique ability of heterosexual couples to have babies as a reason to uphold bans on same-sex marriage.
The briefs defending California’s Proposition 8 gay-marriage ban and a federal law denying benefits to legally married gay couples are sprinkled with references to the ideal family as having a mother, a father and biological children.
“Proposition 8 thus plainly bears a close and direct relationship to society’s interest in increasing the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by the mothers and fathers who brought them into the world in stable and enduring family units,” the provision’s supporters say.
The conservative, public-interest Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., puts it this way: “Reserving marriage to a man and a woman thus reflects the inherent distinction between those pairs capable of engaging in the act which can produce human offspring, and those pairs which cannot.”
At AmericaBlog, John Aravosis writes of Eastman’s comments:
It’s already being called the religious right’s “47% video.”
Aravosis asks, “What do “marriage defenders†have against adopted kids?,” and notes, “Pope Francis is an adoption-hater too.”
Francis, along with the religious right anti-gay haters, just assumes that gay parents are somehow stealing their adopted children from straight parents.  The very reason kids are in adoption services is because they have no parents.  If they were so wanted, they’d already have parents, adoptive or otherwise.  But the very idea that the new Pope doesn’t even understand the plight of kids in adoption, that they have no home, no family, no parents, is shocking.
Eastman seems to be one to not watch carefully his words. Last fall, while addressing a Tea Party group, he chuckled as he suggested “it may be a good thing†if Iran drops a nuclear bomb on New York.
The Supreme Court later this month will hear cases related to California’s Prop 8 that banned same-sex couples from marrying, and DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 that bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.
Needless to say, LGBT and same-sex marriage activists have seized upon the Chairman of NOM’s comments, and quickly created the graphic, above.
UPDATE:
Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress notes:
When President Bush announced his decision to nominate future-Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court, his wife Jane stood nearby holding the hands of two beautiful children — Jack and Josie Roberts. Both of these children were born in Ireland, and later adopted by the future Chief Justice and his wife. Justice Clarence Thomas also has an adopted son, his grandnephew Mark Martin, Jr., who Thomas adopted when Martin was six.
Hat tip: Huffington Post
Related:
Just Two Of America’s 300 Million People Are Funding Almost All Of NOM’s Hate
Karger Accuses NOM Of More Federal Tax Code Violations
Tyranny! Incest! – Entire Anti-Gay Right Wing Freaks Over Prop 8 News