Serial filer of marriage amicus briefs didn't 'give a crap' on day of Prop 8 ruling

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02/05/2015

by Jeremy Hooper

Robert Oscar Lopez has filed numerous amicus briefs arguing against marriage equality. This year many in the conservative media have championed him for sharing his story about how being brought up by a lesbian mother entrenched his support against equal marriage rights. Before that, In 2013, he joined a brief that encouraged the US Supreme Court to uphold California's Proposition 8, a case that directly stemmed from (former) U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's 2010 ruling against the discriminatory ban.

So if Lopez feels co convicted and committed on this, and felt so convicted and committed about Prop 8 specifically, why did he respond to Walker's 2010 ruling like so? And on a conservative website no less:

[Sweetness & Light]

Yes, "BronzeProfessor is Lopez" (verifiable in multiple comments from this same conservative site). And even though he gave so much a "crap" a mere three years later that he felt a need to become a public personality on the issue, there on the day when the judge dealt what was obviously a crucial death blow to the ignoble Prop 8, Lopez was telling his fellow conservatives that he didn't even want to debate the damn thing. Really.

Which coincides with another comment from this same site just a year prior. In this one he admitted that he didn't care about same-sex marriage one way or another:

[Sweetness & Light]

Don't feel very strongly? Most would agree that filing briefs, testifying before multiple legislatures, speaking at international rallies, writing regular commentaries on the subject, and connecting your name and public profile to the cause would constitute strong feelings.

Sure, people are free to change their minds. But the whole basis for Mr. Lopez's objections to same-sex marriage supposedly stems from his childhood. He has written that he has "always resisted the idea that government should encourage same-sex couples to imagine that their partnerships are indistinguishable from actual marriages," and he regularly credits his insightful upbringing for that. That is whole shtick; it is why he is a known figure in this LGBT rights debate.

And yet just five, six years ago—and again, there on that ground zero day when conservatives were FREAKING OUT about Prop 8—he didn't care enough to even voice an objection? It's really hard to see how such a drastic change could happen, at least in a way that logically, consistently, and non-hypocritically gibes with all that he's written and said since. In fact, even if you factor in the years of truly bizarre and often jaw-dropping rhetoric I've read from Mr. Lopez, this discovery strikes me as one the most astounding.

***

*Oh, and in 2004, he wrote this: