Fed. judge assails traditional marriage as “irrational”

Liberal federal judge enacts social engineering, dsmisses support of 76% of voters for traditional marriage as “irrational”

A federal judge has declared Oklahoma’s law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman to be “irrational” and well as unconstitutional. Read his 68-page Opinion and Order here.

“The Court holds that Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Terence Kern — as he emulated other courts engaged in in the liberal practice of fundamentally transforming the definition of marriage.

Oklahoma’s constitutional amendment was passed in 2004, shortly after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared that state’s constitution required recognition of same-sex marriages. The Oklahoma ban passed the state Senate by a vote of 38 to 7, and the state House, 92 to 4, making its way to the ballot.

Kern, age 70 and semi-retired, stepped down from the court, assuming senior status in January 2010, yet he was able to subvert the will of 76% of the state’s voters, substituting his judgment for that of 1,075,216 Oklahomans.

His  decision was in response to a lawsuit filed by two lesbian couples challenging Oklahoma’s law restricting marriage to a union between one man and one woman. He based his ruling on his conclusion that the Oklahoma ban “intentionally discriminates against same-sex couples desiring an Oklahoma marriage license without a legally sufficient justification [for the discrimination].”

Adding insult to injury, Kern opined that  Oklahomans who passed the constitutional amendment had engaged in “an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a government benefit.”

Kern was nominated to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma in 1994 — one of 305 District Court judges appointed by Bill Clinton. He was confirmed by a voice vote, leaving no record of individual yeas or nays.

Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Mary Fallin issued this blistering statement: “The people of Oklahoma have spoken on this issue. I support the right of Oklahoma’s voters to govern themselves on this and other policy matters. I am disappointed in the judge’s ruling and troubled that the will of the people has once against been ignored by the federal government.”

Ed Whelan’s Bench Notes written for National Review provide a brief but worthy analysis.