Vaughn Walker

Newsweek: Stay on Pro-Gay Marriage Ruling Will Hurt GOP Hopes for Big Social Conservative Turnout
By Ken Shepherd | August 17, 2010 | 11:31 AM EDT

How dense and forgetful does Newsweek think socially conservative voters are?

Apparently so much so that the magazine's Ben Adler predicts yesterday's stay on Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling permitting same-sex marriages in California will blunt the hopes Republicans have of social conservatives coming out in force on Election Day to help push the GOP to victory in the midterms on Election Day.

In his August 17 The Gaggle blog post, "9th Circuit Stays Pro-Gay Marriage Ruling, Takes Away GOP Issue,"  Adler argues that:

Social conservatives were set to use the images of gay couples getting married in California as grist to motivate their base to turn out in the midterm elections. Republicans look certain to gain seats in both Houses of Congress in November, as opposition parties typically do during midterms. Whether they will pull the inside straight they need to take over either, or both, the House and Senate, will depend on any number of factors, but turnout is sure to be one of them.

Further, Adler maintained, because "the Democrats have not done much to invite images of an American Gomorrah" what with President Obama moving "very gingerly" and tentatively on issues like repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," social conservatives need the visual impact of gay and lesbian couples at the altar this fall to incense social conservatives and drive them like angry hornets to the ballot box.

Same-sex Marriage Judge Finds That a Child Has Neither a Need Nor a Right to a Mother
By Terence P. Jeffrey | August 9, 2010 | 1:06 PM EDT

U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who ruled last week that a voter-approved amendment to California's constitution that limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, based that ruling in part on his finding that a child does not need and has no right to a mother.
 
Nor, he found, does a child have a need or a right to a father.
 
"Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted, and having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted," the judge wrote in finding of fact No. 71 in his opinion.

Liberal Talk Show Host Thom Hartmann Says It’s Time for Gay 'Reparations'
By Jeff Poor | August 6, 2010 | 7:46 AM EDT

It's one thing to have liberal guilt, but this is taking it way too far. 

In a video posted to YouTube on Aug. 5, popular liberal talk host Thom Hartmann, identified what he considered was the appropriate way to cope with this guilt type, specifically that of which came with the issue of LGBT rights. Hartmann hails himself as "the 10th most important talk show host in America, and the No. 1 most important progressive host, in their ‘Heavy Hundred' ranking" according to Talkers Magazine.

Hartmann laid out the reasoning chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker used in an Aug. 4 ruling that overturn California's Proposition 8 gay marriage ban, a ballot initiative approved by over 7 million voters in 2008. Then he added his own unique solution.

"Well yesterday, Judge Vaughn Walker, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, ruled that California's Proposition 8, which said that it was illegal for gays to get married in that state, was unconstitutional," Hartmann said. "He said that he based his ruling, although the right-wing is all over him for being gay himself - he said he based his ruling on the preponderance of scientific evidence that was presented to him in court, which indicated that the children of families of gay couples grew up every bit as normal, and in fact in some studies more normal and healthy, psychologically healthy, as the children of straight families and that gay couples and their relationships are every bit as psychologically, and socially, and economically significant and legitimate as are straight couples."