Burden of proof: Guess who no can carry it

If you said “teh heterostoopid ghey-bashers”, you’re right!

A federal judge challenged the backers of California’s voter-enacted ban on same-sex marriage Wednesday to explain how allowing gay couples to wed threatens conventional unions, a demand that prompted their lawyer to acknowledge he did not know.

The unusual exchange between U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker and Charles Cooper, a lawyer for the group that sponsored Proposition 8, came during a hearing on a lawsuit challenging the measure as discriminatory under the U.S. Constitution.

Cooper had asked Walker to throw out the suit or make it more difficult for those civil rights claims to prevail.

[…]

The question is relevant to the assertion that Proposition 8 is constitutionally valid because it furthers the states goal of fostering “naturally procreative relationships,” Walker explained.

“What is the harm to the procreation purpose you outlined of allowing same-sex couples to get married?” Walker asked.

“My answer is, I don’t know. I don’t know,” Cooper answered.

They don’t know what they’re trying to stop, yet they still passed a law intended to stop it? Wow. How dumbass is that?

Wait, it gets even dumber:

“There are things we can’t know, that’s my point,” Cooper said. “The people of California are entitled to step back and let the experiment unfold in Massachusetts and other places, to see whether our concerns about the health of marital unions have either been confirmed or perhaps they have been completely assuaged.”

So that’s why these concern trolls passed a deliberately discriminatory law? Just to “step back and let the experiment unfold”? I call bullshit.

Apparently, so does His Honor:

Walker pressed on, asking again for specific “adverse consequences” that could follow expanding marriage to include same-sex couples. Cooper cited a study from the Netherlands, where gay marriage is legal, showing that straight couples were increasingly opting to become domestic partners instead of getting married.

“Has that been harmful to children in the Netherlands? What is the adverse effect?” Walker asked.

Cooper said he did not have the facts at hand.

“But it is not self-evident that there is no chance of any harm, and the people of California are entitled not to take the risk,” he said.

“Since when do Constitutional rights rest on the proof of no harm?” Walker parried, adding the First Amendment right to free speech protects activities that many find offensive, “but we tolerate those in a free society.”

Yeah, that reminds me: Why is it okay to burn crosses on black people’s lawns, but not let same-sex couples marry? I can easily demonstrate the harm to children that witnessing a cross-burning does, and I’m not even a lawyer. Can the gay-bashers demonstrate the harm that a same-sex marriage would allegedly do?

Moreover, why wait to see what happens in Massachusetts? The article goes on to note that 18,000 same-sex couples were married in California before Prop H8 took effect, and that the courts have ruled that their marriages are valid. Why not look at what happens in California, instead of all the way across the Fruited Plain (pardon the unintended pun)?

I have a fair idea of why they won’t. They will do their damnedest to deflect attention away from that salient fact because to admit that those 18,000 California same-sex marriages are valid means there’s no harm done to the kids–and indeed, no harm done to anything except maybe old worn-out bigotries dressed up as “traditional family values”!