AG: Gay Marriage Imposes ‘Significant Public Harm’ Is A ‘Good Faith Legal Argument’

Having endured many attack in the local and national press, Pam Bondi last night released a lengthy statement claiming that her stalwart defense of the Florida law banning same-sex marriage is merely her responsibility as Attorney General given her oath of office. Bondi also claimed that her legal defense is merely a “good faith legal argument” and that she has not demonstrated a personal opinion about marriage equality.

Bondi is extremely mistaken, on all counts.

Bondi, you’ll remember, filed papers in a federal court lawsuit that is attempting to strike down Florida’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples. In that filing, Bondi argued that recognizing out-of-state legal civil same-sex marriages would “impose significant public harm” and play havoc with existing marriage laws in the Sunshine State.

“Florida’s marriage laws,” Bondi wrote in the court filing (PDF), “have a close, direct, and rational relationship to society’s legitimate interest in increasing the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by the mothers and fathers who produced them in stable and enduring family units.”

All of this is merely Pam Bondi “keeping with [her] sworn duty to uphold the laws of the land”?

Wrong.

Last night, the Editorial Board of a leading Florida paper, the Sun Sentinel, wrote:

Bondi’s definition of family is nothing short of insulting to the same-sex couples who have adopted and raised children. It also makes you wonder how she feels about heterosexual couples who marry, but don’t have children. Does the state frown upon them, too?

According to the AP story, Bondi believes the state’s pension and health insurance programs would face significant financial and logistical problems if same-sex marriages were recognized.

You have to wonder whether Bondi, or Gov. Rick Scott, or anyone in state leadership read the heart-wrenching story earlier this year in the Sun Sentinel about the end-of-life problems faced by Deerfield Beach partners Chris MacLellan and Bernard Richard Schiffer. The financial and bureaucratic obstacles placed in front of the couple — as Richard faced the cancer that would take his life — showed how the marriage ban deprives gays of the legal rights afforded heterosexuals.

The U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder, in February told a meeting of state attorneys general that they were under no legal obligation to defend marriage bans, as they likely are unconstitutional. Recently, the attorneys general for both Pennsylvania and Oregon refused to defend their state marriage bans in court, citing their likely unconstitutional status.

Bondi also yesterday claimed she is defending this marriage ban “based solely upon judicial precedent and not the personal views of anyone in our office. Anything else would be bad lawyering–just as in all cases, the personal opinions of the advocates and the judges involved are utterly irrelevant.”

Is it “judicial precedent” to suggest same-sex couples make bad parents who don’t create or provide “stable and enduring family units”?

Bondi claims her “brief makes the case in defense of Florida’s marriage amendment with great respect for the plaintiffs and those whom they represent.”

Clearly, she is mistaken.

She concludes:

“I’m simply doing my job because my job is not to write the law, but to defend it.”

Again, clearly, she is mistaken.