The Hill News

The attorney who won last week's landmark ruling on same-sex marriage in California defended that decision Sunday morning against a prominent conservative who argued the decision won't stand.

Attorney David Boies, who with former Solicitor General Ted Olson successfully persuaded federal judge Vaughn Walker to issue his ruling on Wednesday, said the judge realized "there is simply no basis to continue discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens who want to marry."

Walker issued a temporary stay that blocked Proposition 8, an initiative approved by California voters in 2008 that banned same-sex marriages.

But Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, compared the decision to the Roe v. Wade decision by the Supreme Court in 1973, and said the issue is far from over.

"What you have is one judge, and a district-level judge, and an openly homosexual judge at that, who says he knows better than not only seven million voters in the state of California, but voters in 30 states across the nation that have passed marriage amendments," Perkins said.

Pressed for evidence on Walker's sexuality, Perkins cited an article by the San Francisco Chronicle and said it is relevant to his decision.

Boies, the attorney who successfully argued for President George W. Bush in the Bush vs. Gore decision by the Supreme Court in 2000, said Perkins' argument has no merit.

"It's easy to sit around and throw around opinions and appeal to people's fear and prejudice, and cite studies that either don't exist or don't say what you say they do," he said. "In a court of law, you've got to come in and you've got to support those opinions. You've got to stand up, under oath and cross-examination... And when they come into court and have to defend those opinions, those opinions just melt away. And that's what happened here. There simply was no evidence or studies. That's just made up. It's junk science. And it's easy to say on television. But we put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost."