Update on Federal Prop 8 Lawsuit: Should SF, Gay Legal Groups Get Involved, Or Not?
photo by Mi-ly on Flickr
In summary, there is one young politico and two mega-lawyers (David Boies and Ted Olson) looking for Inherit the Wind-style glory by taking this case swiftly to the Supreme Court, where the fate of gay marriage will likely be up to the whim of Justice Kennedy and whether he's feeling liberal or conservative that day. Then you have the old guard of gay legal organizations -- Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Center for Lesbian Rights -- who have filed a motion to intervene in the case in order to bring their expertise in the area of gay rights litigation, something that the two mega-lawyers (one of whom was Bush's Solicitor General and argued on his behalf in Bush v. Gore) don't really have.
And now San Francisco wishes to join the case as well, in order to bring a "unique local government perspective."
While the courtroom theater promises to be exciting with the mega-lawyers involved, it seems like ignoring the experience of lawyers like those at Lambda would be foolish given all the cases they've already tried on this subject. The judge, after all, is asking the parties involved to bring some huge cultural and scientific questions to bear, including "Are people born homosexual?" and "Are gay people good parents?" Ann Rostow, writing in the San Francisco Bay Times, points to "Romer v Evans, Lawrence v Texas, the marriage cases of Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and California, and innumerable parenting and workplace victories in the appellate and state high courts" which these gay legal groups have helped litigate.
The young politico/PR consultant at the heart of this case, Chad Griffin, who founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights in order to collect donations to fund the case, has yet to weigh in regarding SF's bid to join the suit. But from the sound of his reaction to the gay groups' motion, he wants to keep most of the credit for himself and the Olson/Boies team, assuming that they can succeed in winning this case as "expeditiously" as they hope to.
No doubt, the involvement of San Francisco and the gay legal trio will slow things down. But as Rostow puts it, "Fast tracking the case is not in our interest, winning is."