Law Firms
Gay-Rights Group Visits Kirkland to Deliver Petition to Pepperdine Dean
Posted Mar 16, 2009 1:08 PM CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
A gay rights group dispatched an emissary to Kirkland & Ellis to deliver a petition that warns one its lawyers--Pepperdine law dean Kenneth Starr—that history will condemn his actions.
The Human Rights Campaign is taking issue with Starr’s arguments before the California Supreme Court supporting a voter initiative to ban gay marriage in the state, according to a press release.
Starr, a former member of the ABA Journal Board of Editors, is something of a lightning rod for criticism given his past role as Whitewater prosecutor. He is of counsel at Kirkland, but devotes more of his time to his Pepperdine duties.
The Human Rights Campaign has a video of the petition delivery, handed off to a smiling Kirkland employee by HRC director of marketing Anastasia Khoo. The group gathered 46,000 online signatures characterizing Starr’s work as “misguided and malicious.”
The petition reads in full: "Your attempt to nullify the marriages of 18,000 loving couples in California is misguided and malicious. The rights of a minority should never be stripped by a simple majority vote, and the idea that divorcing parents could help the welfare of children is disgusting. History will condemn your actions."
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Comments
Daniel
Mar 16, 2009 6:51 PM CST
Dear Gay Rights Group, Your attempt to nullify the vote of the majority of California is misguided and shows your contempt for democracy. The rights of the majority should never be stripped by a small minority pandering for special treatment, and the idea of promoting the lie that men and women are inter-changeable defies common sense and the self-evident truth. Only the college educated could believe something so foolish. History already proves you wrong.
Are you so arrogant as to believe that all of the wisest people in history are wrong and you are the only enlightened?
A gay man may legally marry any woman that I may marry. Name one (unrelated) person that a gay man may marry that I may not. You cannot.
The law does not discriminate based on preference. Person A and B are U.S. citizens. Person A likes to vote in the U.S. Person B likes to vote in France. Person B cannot complain that Person A has a right that he does not enjoy. They may both vote in the U.S.If Person B decides not to exercise that right, that is his choice. It is, after all, a free country.
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Daniel
Mar 16, 2009 6:55 PM CST
Should be *Californians* and *enlightened ones* I apologize for any typos.
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gary47290
Mar 16, 2009 7:26 PM CST
Daniel - you don’t get it. We live in a republic, not a democracy. THe majority has no right to impinge on the rights of the minority without a compelling public interest. None has been shown to date in the debates over marriage equality for Same sex couples.
And, it doesn’t matter if the court rules for Ken Starr. Demographics are crystal clear: in the next 6 years, a clear majority of California voters will support equality, as older, more conservative voters pass on, and younger voter who know Gay people and think they should have equality start voting.
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Dave
Mar 16, 2009 7:48 PM CST
The majority did not impose on the rights of a minority. The brief window of opportunity for same-sex “marriage” in California was no more legitimate than Mayor Newsom’s ill-advised renegade weddings. Only 4 black-robed bandits defied the expressed will of the people—61 percent of them in fact—who passed the state DOMA in 2000. It is the legal and constitutional right of the people to amend their constitution as they see fit, and no amount of spin by radical homosexual pressure groups and their assigned bloggers can change that.
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Karen Grube
Mar 16, 2009 7:48 PM CST
What part of “the people have spoken” do you not understand? The people of California legally voted to change theri state constituion to prohibit gay marriage. If you want to change it, do it the same way the people who proposed and sponsored Prop 8 did: by ballot initiative! Until then, NO GAY MARRIAGE. And Ken Starr was completely right: these presumed 18,000 marriages are illegal now! They should all be transtitioned to legal domestic partnerships, not dissolved. I hope the State Supreme Court has the common sense to preserve the rights of these couples by doing that.
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RWR
Mar 17, 2009 9:13 AM CST
This strikes me as being every bit as inappropriate as a religious group delivering an online petition to the HRC’s declaring that they will burn in a pool of flaming sulfur for all eternity for theri work on behalf of gay marriage.
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mohammed
Mar 17, 2009 11:00 AM CST
Comment removed by moderator.
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robroy
Mar 17, 2009 5:54 PM CST
The homosexualists might as well urinate on the flag given the disdain they show for freedom of speech and our democratic process.
Jack booted thugs who don’t get what they want through fair, open elections then turn to intimidation and fear mongering.
Aren’t there some little old ladies that you can push down and take their signs and crosses?
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