The State of Utah has conducted their defense of traditional marriage in such an appalling manner one almost might feel sorry for them. On December 20, when a federal judge ruled that their ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, state attorneys were entirely unprepared and seemingly didn’t know how to respond. It took them over a week to convince, finally, the Supreme Court to stay the ruling.
That was just the start.
The New Civil Rights Movement’s Eric Ethington wrote at the end of last month:
In the latest round of submitted briefs to the 10th Circuit Court, Utah was forced to submit a clarification brief, asking the court to let them correct more than ninety misspelling, grammar, and incorrect citation errors. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it turns out that the clarification brief had errors of its own, and Utah had to submit another brief to fix the new errors.
(By the way, Ethington reports that in a separate brief filed last night, Utah Republican Attorney General Sean Reyes “quietly filed a Petition For Emergency Extraordinary Relief with the Utah Supreme Court to allow the state to halt adoptions by LGBT parents already in motion.”)
Add to this the news that last night the State of Utah submitted a letter asking the 10th Circuit Court judges to totally disregard any arguments they previously made regarding the work of wholly discredited researcher Mark Regnerus.
Regnerus, you’ll remember, was funded by the religious and anti-gay right, and claimed that his study proved that adult children raised by same-sex parents do profoundly worse in dozens of areas that their peers raised by different-sex parents. That claim has been debunked repeatedly, including many times on these pages.
Zack Ford at Think Progress pulls the relevant quote from yesterday’s letter to the Court:
First, we wish to emphasize the very limited relevance to this case of the comparison addressed by Professor Regnerus. As the State’s briefing makes clear, the State’s principal concern is the potential long-term impact of a redefinition of marriage on the children of heterosexual parents. The debate over man-woman versus same-sex parenting has little if any bearing on that issue, given that being raised in a same-sex household would normally not be one of the alternatives available to children of heterosexual parents.
Second, on the limited issue addressed by the Regnerus study, the State wishes to be clear about what that study (in the State’s view) does and does not establish. The Regnerus study did not examine as its sole focus the outcomes of children raised in same-sex households but, because of sample limitations inherent in the field of study at this point, examined primarily children who acknowledged having a parent who had engaged in a same-sex relationship. Thus, the Regnerus study cannot be viewed as conclusively establishing that raising a child in a same-sex household produces outcomes that are inferior to those produced by man-woman parenting arrangements.
You’ll remember, too, that the judge in last month’s Michigan marriage trial added to the disgrace heaped upon Regnerus and his work:
The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration. The evidence adduced at trial demonstrated that his 2012 ‘study’ was hastily concocted at the behest of a third-party funder, which found it ‘essential that the necessary data be gathered to settle the question in the forum of public debate about what kinds of family arrangement are best for society’ and which ‘was confident that the traditional understanding of marriage will be vindicated by this study.’ … While Regnerus maintained that the funding source did not affect his impartiality as a researcher, the Court finds this testimony unbelievable. The funder clearly wanted a certain result, and Regnerus obliged.
[Bolding ours]
With absolutely no scientific or non-religion-based arguments left to discriminate against same-sex couples, how long will it take for marriage equality to reach all 50 states?
Stay tuned today to The New Civil Rights Movement for updates on today’s 10th Circuit hearing.
Image: Screenshot of Utah letter, via Equality Case Files on Scribd