Today, the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC), a national, nonprofit public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, MI filed an amicus brief (friend of the court brief) in the U.S. Supreme Court defending traditional marriage. This is the seventh brief that the Law Center has filed nationally in its fight to preserve marriage and in opposition of marriage redefinition. The brief, which was filed on behalf of the National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders (Coalition), supported the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeal’s decision, which upheld constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman in the states within its appellate jurisdiction: Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky.



The traditional definition of marriage represents the will of the overwhelming majority of voters in those states: fifty-nine percent in Michigan; seventy-four percent in Kentucky; sixty-two percent in Ohio; and eighty percent in Tennessee.

The Sixth Circuit Court’s decision gave the correct deference to state voters and the laws they enacted that define marriage as exclusively the union of one man and one woman. The Sixth Circuit Court ruled that all four marriage amendments before it, Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, passed constitutional review.

This latest TMLC brief is the pinnacle filing in its effort to stem the judge-led onslaught to redefine marriage by ignoring well-established precedent and the will of the overwhelming majority of voters. TMLC’s effort involved forming a legal team consisting of TMLC’s senior trial counsel, Erin Mersino, and Co-counsels William R. Wagner and John S. Kane of Lansing, MI. TMLC has been filing briefs on behalf of the Coalition in significant cases involving traditional marriage. One of the purposes of TMLC’s brief is to negate the homosexual community’s fallacious argument that discrimination because of one’s sexual preference is the same as racial discrimination. Erin Mersino states, “the National Coalition of Black Pastors’ viewpoint is one not often reported in the media. The pastors were able to share with the Law Center first hand experiences, and the brief captures their unique voice.”

Excerpts from TMLC’s brief:

“Comparing the dilemmas of same-sex couples to the centuries of discrimination faced by Black Americans is a deceptive distortion of our country’s culture and history. The disgraces in our nation’s history pertaining to the civil rights of Black Americans are unmatched. No other class of individuals, including individuals who are same-sex attracted, have ever been enslaved, or lawfully viewed not as human, but as property.”

******

“As our tradition recognizes, some truths are self-evident. Among them are that men and women are different. In fact, it is clear from our very existence that men are made for women, and women for men. None of us would be here but for that truth. The Sixth Circuit properly recognized that “[i]t is not society’s laws or for that matter any one religion’s laws, but nature’s laws (that men and women complement each other biologically), that created the policy imperative.”

******

“There is no surer way to destroy an institution like marriage than to destroy its meaning. If ‘marriage’ means whatever a political activist, a cherry-picked plaintiff, or a politically unaccountable appointed judge wants it to mean, it means nothing. If it has no fixed meaning, it is merely a vessel for an unelected judge’s will. It is a subterfuge for judicial legislation. And as Montesquieu observed: “There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.”

******

“Finally, we protest Petitioners’ (homosexual marriage proponents] attempt to equate this case to Loving under the banner of ‘marriage equality.’ Petitioners essentially claim that their proposed redefinition improves marriage by adding a necessary element of ‘equality’ to it. This is certainly a clever ploy, for who can oppose equality? But that is all that it is, a ploy. It is not a valid point.”

******

“Marriage already has all the equality it can contain without destruction of its meaning, purpose, and proper boundaries. Any legally competent man can marry any legally competent woman, regardless of his or the woman’s race, religion, national origin, or even sexual preference, and vice versa. The problem Petitioners claim this Court must resolve is one that does not exist. True marriage equality already exists.”

******