Open Letter To Judge Allowing Challenge To NY Gay Marriage To Go To Trial

Scott Rose explores the anti-gay biased  decision by NY Judge Robert B. Wiggins which allows a challenge against New York State’s gay marriage law to go to trial.

 

Hon. Robert B. Wiggins

Multi-Bench Judge for the

County, Family, Surrogate’s and Supreme Courts of the Livingston County Court

2 Court Street

Geneseo, NY 14454

 
 

December 6, 2011

 

In Re: Your Decision and Order, Index No. 807-2011, Challenge to Marriage Equality Act

 
 

Judge Wiggins:

This is to express utmost alarm and dismay over the non-judicial bias and political propaganda that you wrote into your Decision on the challenge to the Marriage Equality Act.

Though a Governor’s certified facts in support of a message of necessity are, as you surely realize, by law not subject to judicial review, you used your Decision document to attack Governor Cuomo for having given – (as his certified facts necessitating an immediate vote on the Marriage Equality Act) — the discrimination suffered by gay couples as a result of marriage discrimination.

You compounded your offense in turning your Decision into a political op-ed by fraudulently accusing governor Cuomo of “arm-twisting” towards the passage of the Marriage Equality Act. It is a fine thing indeed that, although at the end of your Decision, you admitted that you did not have enough facts to determine the separate question of whether there had been a violation of the Open Meetings Law, you found Governor Cuomo guilty of “arm-twisting” in your remarks about his message of necessity, in regard to which the Plaintiffs’ attorney had brought bogus allegations. You did dismiss those bogus allegations, n’est-ce pas?

In your Decision, you exhibited a very definition of bias in a judge, siding with plaintiffs who had brought a legally-invalid allegation and lambasting the Defendants though they had broken no laws. We all know that the U.S. legal system considers people innocent until proven guilty, so why in your Decision did you find our Governor guilty of “arm-twisting,” — if per your own admission you did not have enough facts legally to decide matters? Further on this, you appear to be willfully ignorant of how those Legislators that decided to vote for the Marriage Equality Act — after being undecided — came to support the proposed legislation.

I suggest very strongly that you go to YouTube to view Senator Grisanti’s explanation of how his Catholic upbringing had made him believe same sex marriage was prohibited, but that after meeting over a course of months with people on both sides of the proposed equality law, and reading, and reading legal documents, he concluded that there is no basis in civil law for not giving gay couples their inalienable right to marry. Governor Cuomo did not twist Senator Grisanti’s arm, nor did he twist the arms of the other Senators that decided to vote yes on equality. When you fraudulently declare in a court document that he twisted arms, you are insulting Governor Cuomo, Senator Grisanti and the other Senators that decided to vote yes, and also making clear that you can not be trusted to carry out your judicial duties without political or some other bias. 

An additional irony is that whereas you fraudulently accused Governor Cuomo of arm-twisting to get the Marriage Equality Act passed, two of the Plaintiffs in this case, the theocratic, anti-gay bullying lobbyists Reverends Jason J. McGuire and Duane R. Motley of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, on June 14 sent a violently-worded letter to Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, warning him that if the Marriage Equality Act passed, “the pound of flesh will come from the Republican majority.” How is that for arm-twisting?

Additional aspects of the way you wrote your Decision make it impossible for anybody familiar with the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct to trust you to be professional in exercising your judicial duties. And, because your op-ed in opposition to Governor Cuomo’s certified facts in support of the message of necessity reflects indifference and perhaps even sadistic malice towards gay people that suffer from institutionalized discrimination against them, you can not be trusted – ever — to safeguard the rights of LGBT New Yorkers; and this is true in a heightened sense when, in your rotations as a Multi-Bench Judge, you hear cases in Family Court.

If you want to be able to write political op-ed pieces, then you should excuse yourself from the bench and go find editors that want your op-ed pieces. If I saw that you had included such non-judicial, unprofessional writing in a court document on any case whatsoever, I would be equally convinced that you can not be trusted to carry out your duties in accordance with the Rules Governing Judicial Conduct.

The theocratic, heterosupremacist opponents of marriage equality, thrilled with your Decision, are parroting your fraudulent allegation that Governor Cuomo engaged in “arm-twisting,” but a judge is supposed to exercise his duties impartially, not with an eye to the next judicial nominating process in his county. Shame on you.

Sincerely,

 

Scott Rose

 

cc:

Governor Andrew Cuomo

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos

Senator Thomas Duane

Thomas A. Klonick, Chair, NY Commission on Judicial Conduct

Frank Bruni, The New York Times

Frank Rich, New York Magazine

Evan Wolfson, President, Freedom to Marry

Other community members