By L.A. Williams
Christian Action League
April 10, 2014
“A public relations campaign designed to pull at heartstrings because it involves people who are sick and elderly” — that’s how the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, sees the latest legal stunt from the American Civil Liberties Union, which on Wednesday announced that it had filed a second lawsuit against the state’s Marriage Protection Amendment.
Already a party to Fisher-Borne et al. v. Smith, filed in 2012 to challenge the state’s adoption laws and then broadened to become a direct attack on the MPA, the ACLU is now demanding that the courts upend the state’s marriage laws and the N.C. Constitution by immediately granting same-sex marriage on behalf of three couples which the organization says are suffering harm because their homosexual relationships aren’t given full legal recognition by the state.
In announcing its case, the ACLU described two elderly women, one of whom is in fragile condition; a younger lesbian couple, which includes a cancer victim; and a third same-sex pair, one of whom has a son, that the other, a veteran, wants to adopt before she dies so he can receive military benefits. Also part of the campaign is one of the lesbian couples in the 2012 case, who have now filed a request for a preliminary injunction, insisting that one partner’s 6-year-old son would get better treatment for his cerebral palsy if he could be on his other mother’s insurance plan.
“These women all face difficulties; no one denies that fact,” said Dr. Creech. “But demanding that the State of North Carolina change its Constitution to accommodate a lifestyle choice that, not only mocks real marriage — the true building block of our society — but also attempts to turn a moral wrong into a civil right, is farcical, as well as shameful.”
“I am incensed at their claim for immediate relief. These same-sex couples consciously chose their lifestyle and placed themselves outside of North Carolina law when they married,” he said. “Instead of choosing to live where their marriage is recognized and where they might receive the benefits they argue they need, instead they purposely chose to reside or stay where a same-sex marriage is illegal and without benefits. Rather than taking responsibility for their own choices, they seek now to use the force of the courts to make the state take responsibility for their choices against the will of its own people.”
Sixty-one percent of North Carolina voters said marriage should only be recognized as the union of a man and woman in the state’s May 2012 primary election.
“Nevertheless, this is the way homosexual activism works – tug at the public’s sympathies from a false premise,” Dr. Creech said, pointing out that each of the couples were wed in other states since 2011.
“The dishonesty here by these couples is they either already knew North Carolina’s marriage laws against same-sex marriage or knew of the passing of its constitutional amendment before they were married in states where same-sex marriage is allowed. Why should North Carolinians be expected to feel sorry for them when they consciously put themselves outside of the parameters of state law? Why should any of us feel sad for people who would demand the Constitution of North Carolina accommodate them for their erroneous and misguided decisions?” he asked.
“Perhaps the only place to feel some sympathy is for the young child involved in Fisher-Borne et al. v. Smith. We should feel sorry for a child whose parent has put the child in a compromised position from the start. Sympathy is not warranted when it’s to be generated from a false premise.”
Dr. Creech said, “When or if a court of unelected justices were to rule in their favor, as eight courts have unfortunately done in similar cases in recent months, it is only further proof we have moved away from the fundamental principle of a government of the people, by the people and for the people, but have become a government of the courts, by the courts and for the courts.”
“This would not be our culture’s listening to its better angels. Instead, it is the newest expression of fascism in the supposed land of the free,” he added.