From DallasVoice.com
‘This is the turning point’
By Lisa Keen - Keen News Service
May 15, 2008 - 8:09:34 PM
California high court strikes down ban on same-sex marriage in pivotal victory for gay rights
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| Shelly Bailes, left, and her partner, Ellen Pontac, celebrate outside the California Supreme Court building in
San Francisco on Thursday, May 15, after the Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage. - PAUL SAKUMA/Associated Press |
“Today
is a day we’ll remember forever,” declared Molly McKay, media director
for Marriage Equality USA, shortly after the California Supreme Court
announced its decision on Thursday, May 15 that state laws prohibiting
the recognition of same-sex marriages violate the constitutional rights
of gay people.
Pamela Brown, policy director for the group,
added, “Today’s decision recognizes that the time has come for lesbian
and gay couples to be woven into the fabric of California families and
to have the freedom to enter into the civil institution of marriage.”
Both
women plan to marry their longtime partners, with Brown saying the
ruling “means the world” to her and her partner Shauna, while McKay
said she “can’t wait to marry [her partner] Davina after 12 wonderful
years together.”
The 4-to-3 opinion, joined by three Republican
and one Democratic appointee, declared that the “fundamental nature of
the substantive rights embodied in the right to marry — and their
central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy,
meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society” requires
the California constitution “be interpreted to guarantee this basic
civil right to all individuals and couples, without regard to their
sexual orientation.”
The ruling is seen as a monumental victory
for gay rights because California, the country’s most populous state,
enjoys broad social, political, economic and cultural influence. The
California Supreme Court, the first to overturn a ban on interracial
marriage in 1948, is also held in high regard.
“I could not be
happier,” said Evan Wolfson, one of the top gay attorneys in the fight
for marriage rights and head of the national Freedom to Marry group.
“This
is the turning point. This is the absolute statement by the nation’s
most respected state supreme court, and a chief justice who is
universally considered to be fair and cautious, affirming that the
exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage is wrong and must fall,”
Wolfson said.
Plaintiffs in the suit and the attorneys who
represented expressed similar reactions of joy and euphoria during a
press conference shortly after the decision was released.
“This
is a moment of pure happiness and joy,” said Shannon Minter, the lead
attorney who argued the case and legal director for the National Center
for Lesbian Rights.
Maya Harris, executive director of the ACLU-California, called the decision “a watershed moment.”
Harris
said the decision would take its “rightful historic place” and “inspire
other rulings that will knock down barriers to the fundamental right to
marry.”
California, the most populous state in the nation, is
the second to allow same-sex couples to obtain marriage licenses.
Minter said that marriages can begin to be licensed after the ruling
takes effect, in about 30 days.
The legal issue before the court
was whether state laws banning the legal recognition of same-sex
marriages in California violate the state constitution’s guarantees of
equal protection, freedom of expression, right to privacy or the
fundamental right to marry. The laws banned both the licensing of
same-sex marriage in California and the recognition of same-sex
marriages licensed elsewhere.
“It is true, of course, that as an
historical matter in this state marriage always has been limited to a
union between a man and a woman,” wrote Chief Justice Ronald George, an
appointee of former Republican George Deukmejian. “Tradition alone,
however, generally has not been viewed as a sufficient justification
for perpetuating, without examination, the restriction or denial of a
fundamental constitutional right.”
George citied the landmark
1948 decision by the California Supreme Court that struck down laws
banning interracial marriage. That decision, Perez v. Sharp, eventually
led to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia, which
struck down anti-miscegenation laws nationally in 1967.
California’s
Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has twice vetoed
legislation to approve of same-sex marriage, said today he will support
the Supreme Court’s decision and will not support the anti-gay marriage
initiative that is likely to appear on the November ballot.
And,
importantly, the majority said that, after reviewing “numerous
California decisions that have examined the underlying bases and
significance of the constitutional right to marry,” it concluded that,
“under this state’s Constitution, the constitutionally based right to
marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic
substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with
marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal
autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the
Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative
process.
Because the lawsuits implicated only the state
constitution, the decision is not appealable to the U.S. Supreme Court,
said Jenny Pizer, senior counsel in Lambda Legal Defense and Education
Fund’s western office.
The lawsuit sprang out of a decision by
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2004 to order city officials to
defy state law and begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Newsom’s
action came just months after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
ruled that the state constitution in that state required equal
treatment of gay and straight couples in marriage licensing.
The
national Freedom to Marry organization estimates that about 4,000 gay
couples obtained a marriage license in San Francisco before the
California Supreme Court ordered it to stop. Attorneys for the
plaintiffs said those marriages were voided by the state supreme court
when it stopped the city from issuing any more licenses.
The
California high court made its decision only two months after hearing
more than three hours of oral argument in March on the case. During
those arguments, several judges asked whether the issue shouldn’t be
given to the voters to decide.
The questions seemed to be
responding to a drumbeat by many prominent Republican politicians —
including President George Bush and Republican presidential nominee
John McCain — that rulings supporting equal rights to marriage for gay
couples are creating new law and going against the will of the majority
of people.
In fact, all but one of the states that have
considered ballot initiatives to ban gay marriage have approved them by
fairly large margins.
The petition to have a constitutional ban
on same-sex marriage on the California ballot this November must still
be validated by the California Secretary of State, but activists
clearly expect it to be the next big battle.
California has been
the scene of one of the longest and most vigorous debates over same-sex
marriage. The state marriage law was amended by the legislature in 1977
to ban marriage licenses for same-sex couples. In 2000, voters approved
Proposition 22 to amend a state law to prohibit California from
recognizing same-sex marriages licensed in other states or countries.
The
state legislature has twice approved (in 2005 and 2007) — and Gov.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has twice vetoed — legislation to allow licensing
of same-sex marriages.
On May 6, a state appeals court ruled
that a gay man who believed his male companion had properly registered
as his legal domestic partner was entitled to protection under the
state’s Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act, approved in
1999. The ruling provided that the gay partner receive the same legal
protection as a person who believed he or she had entered into a legal
marriage only to find out later that they had not.
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