Washington, D.C. – The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) released the following statement, reviewed Elena Kagan’s record, and concluded: Kagan has radical commitments that will supercede her commitment to uphold the Constitution as the Framers made it.
“A vote for Elena Kagan as Supreme Court Justice will be a vote for imposing gay marriage on all 50 states,†said Brian Brown, President of NOM.
The Supreme Court will likely vote on two key marriage cases in the next two years: Perry v. Schwarzenegger, challenges California’s Proposition 8, and seeks a ruling that would impose gay marriage on all 50 states; and Gill et al v. Office of Personnel Management will ask the Supreme Court to overturn the federal definition of marriage as the union of husband and wife in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
“The brief that Elena Kagan filed as Solicitor General on DOMA explicitly and gratuitously rejected the key legal defense for marriage as the union of husband and wife—that such unions uniquely protect children by encouraging responsible procreation. Kagan’s brief was designed to, and in fact will, undermine the legal defense of marriage currently before the federal courts,†said Brown.
“We have seen this Kagan tactic in state litigation before, in which Attorney Generals (like California’s Jerry Brown) who initially claim they are defending a law, actually file briefs that undermine the law and substantially contribute to its legal defeat. This tactic is not only wrong, in the sense that it fails to defend marriage, it is deeply duplicitous or at least intentionally misleading,†said Maggie Gallagher, Chairman of NOM. “The current PR campaign designed to portray Kagan as opposed to imposing a constitutional right to gay marriage based on her responses during the confirmation process for Solicitor General is similarly clearly wrong and misleads the public about her core values and commitments to Constitutional law,†added Gallagher.
“While we have no quarrel with Elena Kagan’s personal character, or with her intellectual brilliance, or technical qualifications, we have a problem with her legal views which are radically out of step with the views of the majority of the American people,†said Brown. “There is no right to gay marriage in our beloved Constitution. The majority of people and the majority of state courts have rejected a right to same-sex marriage. We urge Senators to reject a Supreme Court nominee whose record reasonably suggests she will vote to strip from the American people our right to vote for marriage as one man and one woman,†Brown stated.
