Prop 8 Trial, Day 8: The Real Motivations of Marriage-Ban Supporters
The sensational trial in which two of the nation's highest-profile lawyers are challenging California's referendum banning gay marriage continued with an American politics guru who defused claim that queers are not politically vulnerable. The challengers to the gay-marriage ban also pointed up alleged the anti-gay bias that motivated the successful campaign to squelch the state's short-lived marriage equality.
A week ago, the challengers had introduced an incendiary taped deposition. ProtectMarriage.com Board Member Hak-Shing "Bill" Tam explained why he campaigned for passage of the voter initiative. He believed that a "gay agenda" would follow up marriage equality with pedophilia and prostitution and posed threats to children.
Thursday, David Boies, one of the high profile attorneys leading the bench trial challenge, called Tam to to the stand for a direct examination.
Tam, who successfully petitioned the court last year to join the defense of Prop 8, earlier this month said he actually was not heavily involved in ProtectMarriage.com and asked to be released from the case--a request on which U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker has not yet acted upon.
On Thursday afternoon, Boies sought to show did Tam play an important role in the campaign. Not only that, Boies contended, he did so with religious messages the Yes on 8 attorneys had argued did not play a major role in Prop 8 campaigning.
Boies began by questioning Tam about the sworn statement he had filed to join the case. Tam had said he was invited to join the leadership of ProtectMarriage. He ended up supervising the official ballot language of Prop 8 and spending a majority of his working time in the Yes on 8 campaign.
Tam admitted he signed the statement. But, he added, it had actually been prepared for him by other ProtectMarriage members.
During the testimony,Tam revealed he first became involved in campaigns to restrict marriages in California to opposite-sex couples back in 2004. That was when the marriage movement began in California, with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordering clerks to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Tam ended up helping to coordinate efforts in 2007 to collect petition signatures to put Prop 8 on the November 2008 ballot. He made speeches, took part in debates, wrote articles and got rally speakers for the Asian-American community for the Yes on 8 campaign.
His roles were documented largely through several email exchanges. In one he said he was waiting for instructions from ProtectMarriage on when to begin collecting signatures.
In another, he asked fellow ProtectMarriage member Andrew Pugno what he "should or should not disclose" in case he was questioned by members of the Chinese press. In an email written in 2007 after the state Supreme Court threw out California's pre-Prop 8 same-sex marriage ban, he wrote, "We can't lose the next battle or God's definition of marriage will be permanently erased from the state of California." Tam confirmed he was talking about Prop 8.
Tam said he had other reasons than his religious beliefs for opposing same-sex marriage.
"It is important for (the next generation) to understand the historical meaning of marriage," Tam said. "It's very important that our children won't grow up to fantasize or think about, 'Should I marry Jane or John when I grow up?' This is very important for Asian families--the stability of the family."
Asked if he thought that necessitate stopping gays and lesbians from marrying, Tam responded, "I did not think of it that way."
Tam said he did not think he was hostile to gays and lesbians, that he supported civil unions supports partnerships and that he had not yet decided his position on whether gays should have the right to adopt. Boies asked him about his involvement with the website onemanonewoman.net. (That site now redirects to www.moralmajority.us).
Tam said he was the secretary of the group that published the site, America Return to God Prayer Movement. Asked about a link on that site headlined "Studies show that homosexuality is linked to pedophilia," he said he believed that and thought it was an appropriate thing to tell people.
"This informations are not from what you see here, those are not the statements of the organization," Tam said. "Those are just links to other websites. So as far as my position is, if there is something like this, people want to read about that and the organization has the right to link it."
Tam was then asked about a paper in which he wrote, "If Proposition 8 does not pass, 'they' will lose no time pushing the gay agenda" and "The San Francisco city government is under the rule of homosexuals."
Tam said he stood by those statements. Asked what he meant by that, Tam said, "Tom Ammiano was a supervisor." (Ammiano is an openly gay man.) When he was asked why he would say that even though he knew Newsom was not gay, he said he based the belief on Newsom's decision to authorize the marriage licenses.
"If they were not friends of them, why would they do that?" Tam asked rhetorically. "You're trying to use your legal arguments to pinpoint me on something that I believe was beyond my legal intent."
In the same article, Tam wrote, "What will be next? On their agenda is legalizing sex with children."
He said he wrote that to help convince people to vote for Prop 8 even though lowering the age of consent was not in the initiative.
Tam went on to explain his reasons for writing this: "When I look at liberal countries in Europe or look north to Canada, they have their legal age of consent down to like 14 years old, some even down to 13 years old. To me, that is very unacceptable, or an older child having sex with another child. And Canada was a country that legalized same-sex marriage, so the liberal trend--that's what I was afraid of."
Tam agreed with Boies that allowing same-sex marriages did not lower the age of consent in Canada. He said he did not know what connection same-sex marriages had with lower consent ages in Europe.
Tam also had written, "If Proposition 8 loses, one by one other states will fall into Satan's hands."
"By 'Satan's hands,' you're permitting lesbians and gays to marry?" Boies asked.
"Yes," Tam responded.
The conclusion of the lengthy cross examination and redirect of Stanford political science professor Gary Segura preceeded Tam's testimony.
Segura dismissed a defense expert's conclusion that religion played something close to an equal role in both sides of the Prop 8 campaign. The four religious groups cited as having supported Prop 8 represented 34 percent of the national population, he noted.
On the other hand, the four groups he cited as opposing represented only opposed about 2 percent of the population.
When Prop 8 attorney David Thompson asked him if most LGBT leaders hadn't supported passage of civil unions and domestic partnerships, Segura responded that that was the only choice they had at the time. The alternative would have been no legal recognition for their relationships.
Passage of those unions may have been a strategic move by their opponents to cut off support for marital rights, he added
He was then questioned about Quaker support for same-sex marriage cited in a poll mentioned in the proponents' report as supporting same-sex marriage. Segura shot back at the relative numerical insignificance of that support: "Yes, all three of them supported same-sex marriage."
Segura said that agreeing to the conclusions of the proponents' report "would be the political science equivalent of malpractice."
Asked if reports of vandalism of Yes on 8 signs and physical attacks on supporters might have played a major role in drumming up support for Prop 8, Segura said such regrettable acts could sometimes be "seen as a cry for help or the ultimate expression of helplessness."
Asked about the prevalence of state laws allowing gays to adopt, Segura said, "The history of laws on adoption is largely a history of silence on whether gays and lesbians can adopt." He said he had also predicted that "the new frontline would be anti-adoption after success in blocking same-sex marriage. II would not be surprised to see anti-adoption laws appearing in the near future."=