Bill Schuette, "Michigan’s messianic attorney general, ... squandered hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars," a Free Press editorial says.
In an editorial that praises Federal Judge Bernard Friedman's "carefully reasoned decision . . . that breathes new vitality into that venerable institution" of marriage, the Detroit Free Press harshly rebukes the "messianic" state official who argued against same-sex weddings.
The ruling is also a humiliating defeat for Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, who squandered hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars to mount a pathetic legal defense that demeaned his office and disserved his constituents. He would be well advised not to compound his bad judgment by appealing Friedman’s decision. . . .
Friedman’s ruling makes short work of the state’s specious arguments that the same-sex ban was calculated to “promote responsible procreation” or assure that Michigan children are raised in an “ideal family structure” headed “by two biological parents.” . . .
Friedman did not even address the state’s contention that allowing same-sex couples to marry would “dilute the public socialization of young people into a marriage culture” or “send a message to women that they have no significant place in family life.” . . .
In his ruling, Friedman dismissed the state’s experts as “unbelievable” representatives of “a fringe viewpoint that is rejected by their colleagues across a variety of social science fields.”
The attorney general has yet to disclose the tab for this parade of incompetents, but it represents only a portion of what taxpayers will ultimately pay for his Pyrrhic legal crusade; inevitably the state will be ordered to pay a substantial share of the victorious plaintiffs’ costs, too.
The newspaper says the Republican attorney general put personal views before public responsibility:
Whatever personal objections he may have to same-sex marriage, Schuette should have recognized that the constitutionality of Michigan’s 2004 ban was on shaky ground after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act last year. The . . . ruling prompted attorneys general in many states to abandon their defense of bans like Michigan’s, and Schuette might have saved a lot of time and taxpayer dollars by following their lead.
Instead, Michigan’s messianic attorney general pressed on.
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