WASHINGTON, D.C., October 31, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – This week saw two same-sex “weddings” performed within the walls of the United States Supreme Court, presided over by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, respectively.
While same-sex “marriage” has been legal in Washington, D.C., since 2009, the federal DOMA law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman prohibited such ceremonies from being performed on federal property. Ginsburg voted to strike down a provision of DOMA in June.
Justice Ginsburg, 80, officiated the first of the two ceremonies last weekend, presiding over the “marriage” of one of her former law students, Ralph Lee Pellecchio, 64, to James Carter Wernz, 69, according to an announcement in the New York Times. The “wedding” was reportedly performed inside her chambers.
The ceremony was Ginsburg's third. In August, Ginsburg became the first Supreme Court justice to preside over a homosexual “wedding.” The ceremony for 59-year-old Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and 32-year-old John Roberts, a commodities regulator, was held at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. At the time, both Kaiser and Ginsburg said the couple’s choice of officiant was intended to send a message, legitimizing gay “marriage” in the eyes of the public. Kaiser told the Associated Press her participation “helps to encourage others and to make the issue seem less of an issue, to make it just more part of life.”
Ginsburg later said same-sex “marriage” represented the “genius” of the U.S. Constitution.
On Tuesday, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, 83, officiated the second known homosexual ceremony at the high court, “marrying” two men in a private lounge. O’Connor had previously worked with one of the men, lobbyist Jeffrey Trammell, when she was chancellor of the College of William and Mary in Virginia and he was rector.
O’Connor’s decision to preside over a gay “wedding” at the highest court in America is just the latest step in a long march leftward for the former justice, who was appointed in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan.
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In 1986’s Bowers v. Hardwick, the Supreme Court’s first case dealing with the legalities of homosexual activity, O’Connor sided with Justice Byron White, who said a constitutional right to sodomy was “at best, facetious.” At the time, the court upheld Georgia’s right to ban the behavior.
But just 10 years later, O’Connor switched sides, joining Justice Anthony Kennedy and four liberal justices in ruling that Colorado could not constitutionally bar municipalities from passing homosexual anti-discrimination laws, giving homosexuals their first major Supreme Court victory. Then, in 2003, during Lawrence v. Texas, she sided with Kennedy again, ruling that Texas’s anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional.
That ruling invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making sodomy legal nationwide.