Over 75 current and former prominent GOP figures including elected officials,  Reagan and Bush
cabinet members, former governors, and key GOP consultants and strategists have signed on to an amicus brief to be filed on Thursday urging the Supreme Court to strike down Proposition 8.

The brief argues that “there is no legitimate, fact-based justification for different legal treatment of committed relationships between same-sex couples,” arguing that marriage equality promotes conservative values and that there is no credible social science behind the arguments pushed by Prop 8’s proponents:

Amici start from the premise—recognized by this Court on at least fourteen occasions—that marriage is both a fundamental right protected by our Constitution and a venerable institution that confers countless benefits, both to those who marry and to society at large.  …  It is precisely because marriage is so important in producing and protecting strong and stable family structures that amici do not agree that the government can rationally promote the goal of strengthening families by denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.

Deinstitutionalization.  No credible evidence supports the deinstitutionalization theory.   …  Petitioners fail to explain how extending civil marriage to same-sex couples will dilute or undermine the benefits of that institution for opposite-sex couples … or for society at large.  It will instead do the opposite.  Extending civil marriage to same-sex couples is a clear endorsement of the multiple benefits of marriage—stability, lifetime commitment, financial support during crisis and old age, etc.—and a reaffirmation of the social value of this institution.

Biology.  There is also no biological justification for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.  Allowing same-sex couples to marry in no way undermines the importance of marriage for opposite-sex couples who enter into marriage to provide a stable family structure for their children.

Child Welfare.  If there were persuasive evidence that same-sex marriage was detrimental to children, amici would give that evidence great weight.  But there is not.  Social scientists have resoundingly rejected the claim that children fare better when raised by opposite-sex parents than they would with same-sex parents.

Among the Republicans signing the brief, include:  Former California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman, former U.S. Deputy Atty General Jim Comey, Mary Cheney, Senior Romney
Adviser in Iowa Dave Kochel, Reps Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Richard Hanna
(R-NY),  Bush National Security Advisor Steven Hadley and of course the now out and gay Ken Mehlman who helped destroy hundreds of thousands of gay and lesbian lives and without whose help there would have never been any statewide constitutional amendments describing marriage between “one man and one woman”