A case the Ninth Circuit heard five months ago and is now writing a decision in might heavily influence how the appellate court deals with last week’s Proposition 8 decision. Readers may recall that a professor at Los Angeles City College called Jonathan Lopez a “fascist bastard” after he gave an informative speech about Christianity in a public speaking class in November 2008. The professor refused to allow Lopez to finish his speech after Lopez read the dictionary definition of marriage, as being the union of one man and one woman. The professor even wrote on Lopez’s evaluation sheet, “Ask God what your grade is,” and later threatened him with expulsion. Lopez sued and obtained a preliminary injunction against the College’s speech code, which caused the professor’s actions and which instructs students to self-censor their speech if they think it might “offend” someone. The College appealed this ruling and last March the Ninth Circuit held oral argument. A ruling is expected any day.
Indeed, a Lopez ruling may give us some insight into the Ninth Circuit’s view of the Prop 8 decision, which has been appealed to that court. After all, the cases bear several similarities.
First, when hearing Lopez discuss his religious beliefs about marriage, his professor verbally abused him by calling him a “fascist bastard.” (Remember, for the Left, stigma beats dogma.) In defending the professor’s actions, the College argued that some speech and beliefs do not merit constitutional protection. Similarly, in Perry, the plaintiffs argued that the votes or speech of 7 million Californians should not count because their beliefs are rooted in prejudice. The Perry court adopted this reasoning and wrote: “Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.” It also wrote that supporters of Proposition 8 hold “antiquated” views. While the Perry decision is more eloquent than the professor’s visceral reaction, both contain the same message: opposition to same-sex “marriage” is bigoted.
Second, in Lopez, the professor silenced the student’s ability to speak. In Perry, the plaintiffs argued and the court ruled that the People of California cannot exercise their rights to speak and vote by supporting a definition of marriage that is millennia old. Fundamentally, both the court and the professor decided that when the right to speak, believe and vote conflicts with the Left’s social agenda, then those people must be silenced and stopped. As my colleague David French points out, Judge Walker and the professor are both entitled to their beliefs about same-sex “marriage,” but the Constitution prohibits them from silencing or disenfranchising people simply for defining marriage as being between a man and a woman.
What will the Ninth Circuit do with these cases? In both cases there is robust precedent for upholding Lopez’s right to speak and California’s right to define marriage. If the Ninth Circuit properly rejects the College’s argument and holds that Lopez has the right to speak freely on campus about his religious beliefs, no matter how much some may disagree with them, then the court might – and should – extend that logic to Perry and hold that citizens of a state have a right to define marriage as they wish, no matter who disagrees with it. Our glimpse at the future of marriage may come any day now through a case which at first appears so fundamentally different from Perry, but is so culturally intertwined.
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