California Conservative

The S.F. Chronicle reports: “Orange County attorney Richard Gilbert says the lawyers fighting for same-sex marriage across the country are leading the gay and lesbian community astray.”

The widely accepted strategy for legalizing same-sex marriage — to push for legislation and court victories state by state — is too timid, Gilbert said at his office in Santa Ana, the county seat of one of California’s conservative bastions. He thinks they should be fighting nationally and has sued Orange County in federal court, saying the U.S. Constitution guarantees a marriage license to his clients, a gay couple.

But leaders at Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Equality California say a U.S. Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage that comes too soon could result in the entire gay community losing rights, not gaining. They are doing whatever they can to stop Gilbert’s suit.

“I don’t believe the attorneys in San Francisco have a clue about this,” said Gilbert, 54, whose two biggest cases to date involved surrogate mothers who changed their minds about giving up the children they carried. He lost one of those cases and won the other and has never previously argued for gay rights. Gilbert, who is not gay, led the Orange County chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in the early 1980s but is no longer a member.

“This argument they have is unheard of,” Gilbert said. “Don’t make the fight for civil rights? Doesn’t that sound wrong? Don’t make the fight for civil rights because we’re afraid we’ll lose? What are they talking about?”

(The full article here)

RELATED:
More on gay marriage politics in California

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 9:57 am and is filed under California, Culture, Law, Orange County, Special Interests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.