'Perpetuation Of The Human Race' Justifies Gay Marriage Ban, Judge Rules

Two groups opposed to gay marriage are cheering a federal judge's ruling upholding Nevada's gay marriage ban.

U.S. District Chief Judge Robert Jones on Thursday ruled against plaintiffs challenging the constitutionality of Nevada's ban.

In Baker v. Nelson, Jones, a George W. Bush appointee, found that gay men and lesbians do not qualify for protections under the Constitution's Equal Protection Clause because they have not historically faced discrimination.

“Homosexuals have not historically been denied the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, or the right to own property,” Jones wrote.

Jones also cited recent victories at the ballot box for supporters of marriage equality.

“It simply cannot be seriously maintained, in light of these and other recent democratic victories, that homosexuals do not have the ability to protect themselves from discrimination through democratic processes such that extraordinary protection from majoritarian processes is appropriate.”

The Christian conservative Family Research Council (FRC) cheered the decision.

“His opinion … may be one of the most compelling yet on the question of 'equality' for homosexual couples,” the group wrote in an OpposingViews.com op-ed calling Jone's ruling “a 41-page masterpiece that thoroughly dismantled the Left's legal logic.”

The National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) Maggie Gallagher also applauded Jones in a piece titled Another Federal Judge Rejects Same-Sex Marriage as a Civil Right.

“The District court in Nevada just upheld that state's marriage amendment, using the wins for gay marriage this November at the ballot box as evidence that gay people are not a protected class (because they are not politically powerless),” she wrote.

In his ruling, Jones also maintained that gay people are allowed to marry – so long as they marry a person of the opposite sex – and that allowing gay couples to marry might devalue the institution.

Straight couples might “cease to value the civil institution as highly as they previously had and hence enter into it less frequently … because they no longer wish to be associated with the civil institution as defined.”

Jones, who has served as a bishop in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), also opined that the “perpetuation of the human race” depended on the state's current definition of marriage as a heterosexual union.

“The perpetuation of the human race depends upon traditional procreation between men and women. The institution developed in our society, its predecessor societies, and by nearly all societies on Earth throughout history to solidify, standardize, and legalize the relationship between a man, a woman, and their offspring, is civil marriage between one man and one woman.”

Plaintiffs have vowed to appeal the ruling.

So, seriously, how is it someone with so much connection to a religious institution be allowed too make an unbiased decision on an issue so religiously charged?

I'm not even gonna touch the sheer nonsense of his statement that homosexuals have not historically faced discrimination.

Appealing this judgement should become a moral imperative.