The National Committee for Faith, Family and Prayer, an affiliate of Citizens United, recently filed briefs supporting the retention of Proposition 8 and DOMA. Those two briefs reveal a lot about Citizens United's true character--and it isn't good.
The Prop 8 brief makes what is quite possibly the single most half-baked argument I've ever heard in defense of laws discriminating against gays. In Citizens United's world, these laws don't demean gays. They actually affirm their humanity.
(W)hile the discrimination against Blacks in America denied them their rightful status as a member of the human race vis-à-vis their white counterparts, the discrimination against homosexuals affirmed their status as full and equal members of the human race. Indeed, the very definition of the “crime against nature,” was employed to emphasize that the sexual behavior condemned was contrary to the law of human nature. Homosexual behavior, then, while unnatural did not mean that those guilty of it were any less human.
Excuse me? In what world is discrimination against someone not demeaning by definition?
The DOMA brief calls for Bolling v. Sharpe, which struck down segregation in DC's public schools, to be thrown out. That case, which was decided on the same day as Brown v. Board of Education, found that the Fifth Amendment's due process clause includes a presumption of equal protection. In Citizens United's view, there was "no legitimate basis" for finding such a provision in the Fifth Amendment, and the Bolling case was the start of a litany of "atextual cases." If Citizens United were to have its way, 50 years of laws against discrimination by the federal government would go in the dumpster.
Such loony arguments aren't all that surprising considering who joined Citizens United in filing the briefs. According to People for the American Way (which gets a hat tip for digging up these pieces of lunacy), Citizens United was joined in both briefs by a slew of wingnut groups. Among them were the Center for Western Journalism, the outfit that birthed WorldNutDaily. Also joining both was Eugene Delgaudio's Public Advocate--the same group that is currently being sued for stealing a gay couple's wedding picture and using it in an attack flyer.