Judges Hide Behind “Civil Rights”

News Analysis
Judges Hide Behind “Civil Rights”
By Mass News Staff
May 12, 2004
     When judges wish to decide a public issue by themselves without interference from the citizens, they label it a “civil rights” issue.
      Then everyone else stands aside, muttering, “Oh, I didn’t realize this involved civil rights. Please excuse me, Sir.”
      This is precisely what Margaret Marshall is attempting. She will be at the home of lesbianism, Smith College in Northampton at about 12:15 p.m. today, speaking at the county Court House about the famous U.S. Supreme Court decision which outlawed segregation in our schools in 1954, Brown v. Board of Education.
       She will equate that decision with her ruling about homosexual “marriage.” She told many newspapers last November, right after her decision, that she had made that ruling because she has always been a crusader for “civil rights,” starting with blacks in her native South Africa, and then the “civil rights” of women after coming to America when she was twenty-six-years old.
      But there are many who disagree, including three judges on her own court who say she does not have the power to do what she is doing. In other words, she is running a rogue court. They say, “The power to regulate marriage lies with the Legislature, not the judiciary.”
       So who is it who decides when something is a “civil rights” issue? In this case, it was Judge Marshall and her lesbian friend, Mary Bonauto. We hear their decision ad nauseam. And we all wonder, puzzled, when did mutual-masturbation by lesbians become a “civil right?”
       Many of the objections to Marshall are coming from black people who do not like their struggles for civil rights being compared as she is attempting here in Massachusetts. They dislike being compared with homosexuals.
      As the Boston Globe has reported, this is a tough sell for Marshall. But one person who agrees passionately with her is her mentor (and her husband’s boss), Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., Chairman of the New York Times and the Boston Globe.