Q-Seattle Events: Tacky Tourist Clubs

A conservative group from California finally got its second day in court yesterday when its lawyers argued before a three-judge state appeals court panel that a law signed in 2004 by Mayor Greg Nickels violates the state's "Defense of Marriage Act" -- a law that grants special rights of civil marriage only to heterosexual couples.

PJI's case was dismissed by a King County Superior Court in 2004. The conservative law group filed its appeal after the state Supreme Court narrowly upheld DOMA in the split Andersen decision.

A conservative site, LifeSiteNews.com, that liberally uses scare quotes in its stories offers this take on on the case filed by Pacific Justice Institute (PJI), a non-profit "legal defense" organization that defends "religious freedom" and the "rights of parents" (to use our own version of the punctuation technique).

Matthew McReynolds, the PJI lawyer who argued the case on Tuesday, stated in a PJI press release, "The people of Washington spoke unequivocally through their elected legislators, upholding traditional marriage. Mayor Nickels has absolutely no authority to recognize same-sex marriage in contradiction of state law."

Brad Dacus, president of Pacific Justice Institute, also said, "Our nation cannot exist without continued respect for the rule of law. Having spoken through their elected representatives, the citizens of Washington State are entitled to have their will respected by local officials, regardless of their ideology."

McReynolds further pushed this point before the state Court of Appeals on Tuesday, stating that the mayor was undermining the state ban on homosexual marriage. Referring to the mayor's decision, he stated according to Seattlepi.com, "It's our position that this goes way beyond employee benefits. He (Mayor Nickels) was just using this as an opportunity to undercut the Defense of Marriage Act."

The "LifeSiteNews" outfit overstates the significance of the silly Nichols order that PJI has challenged. Their story claims that Nichols

ordered that businesses give marriage benefits to same-sex couples... . The mayor extended the regular marriage privileges to those couples that were "married" by other governments, such as Massachusetts. The Mayor's policy allows same-sex couples to sign up for benefits without having to file for domestic partnership status.

The order, however, applies only to employees of city departments and not to businesses in general.

As the PI story on the suit points out, it is a mostly symbolic order.

In practical terms, both the lawsuit and the city rules it challenges are largely symbolic. Nickels' order requires city departments to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states.

But that order was largely symbolic because the city already had provided benefits to domestic partners since 1989. However, the order does allow married same-sex workers to sign up for such coverage with less paperwork -- signing on as "married" rather than filling out separate "domestic partnership forms."

The PI reports that one of the judges on the panel, Judge Stephen Dwyer, took a slap at the broad language used by Nichols in his limited order. "The mayor was misleading the public in terms of what he was trying to accomplish," Dwyer said.

According to Christian Post, the California-based PJI is assisted in the case by attorney Darren Walker of Vancouver, Wash. and Brian Fahling of the American Family Association who will act as co-counsel.

G.A.Y blog explains it well under the headline, If it's pro-gay and on the West Coast, PJI's gunnin' for it:

And in case you were confused, they are saying "goes against the state's DOMA law" as if challenging that discriminatory, constitution-vioalting law is a bad thing. Which seems weird to us, as in the not-too-distant future, it will inevitably be those who didn't challenge that historical blight known as DOMA who will be looked at with shrugged shoulders and "how could you not have" eyes. That's because DOMA (at both the federal and state level) is like the equivalent of legislative cow dung, only more foul.

Yet regardless of their "but a discriminatory law is on the books" claims, this executive order does not at all go against the state's wretched DOMA law, as it doesn't confer the right on anyone grant gay marriages or recognize them as legal in Washington; it merely directs Seattle city employees to grant equal benefits.

Here's just hoping the court's informed legal opinion agrees with our quasi-informed, non-legally-binding viewpoints on the order.

Labels: doma, gay news, marriage equality, Seattle