University of California, Davis law professor Vikram Amar told WSJ that he would be “quite surprised” if Judge Vaughn Walker didn’t rule that Prop 8 is unconstitutional.
Final statements were heard this week in the California federal trial of Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. Walker questioned the argument that marriage is aimed at serving society’s importance in procreation.
The judge asked Ted Olson, who represents the two same-sex couples, why domestic partnerships aren’t sufficient. Mr. Olson responded with testimony from gay and lesbian witnesses describing the humiliation they felt by not being allowed to marry.
However Judge Walker rules, the case is likely headed for the 9th Circuit and then the Supreme Court.
(For more information on closing arguments, check these articles on NYT, WSJ, and LAT.)
Perry v. Schwarzenegger, which is currently before a federal district court in California but is likely to be appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, is the case to repeal Proposition 8 in California. The Perry case has scheduled closing arguments for next Wednesday. The case was taken to court by two couples, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier and their four children, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo. These couples are asking for equal marriage rights, which are granted to every other American family. Their rights are blocked from obtaining marriage licenses under California’s Proposition 8.
“We have come together in a nonpartisan fashion because the principle of equality before the law transcends the left-right divide and cuts to the core of our nation’s character. This is not about politics; it’s about an indispensable right vested in all Americans,” stated the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, a supporter of the Perry case.
American courts have ruled on issues such as marriage since their forming. When the court faced the subject of interracial marriage, a Gallup poll stated that 74 percent of Americans disapproved, yet the courts voted for equality. A recent same-sex marriage poll showed 47 percent of people support same-sex marriage. The odds for equality are set much better and the uphill battle from the public is less resistant than for interracial marriage.
“Among individuals ages 18 to 29, an estimated 65 percent support marriage equality. Our history will soon be written by young people who are seizing the reins from the baby boomers’…. As the country evolved the meaning of one small word — “all” — has evolved as well,” stated Robert A. Levy, co-chair of the advisory board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
The Massachusetts attorney general, Martha Coakley, asked that a federal court strike down the existing ban on gay marriage. Coakley filed suit against the ban, arguing that the law conflicts with a states individual rights to be able to define marriage or recognize civil unions in each state.
The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act has been challenged in federal courts twice this month. Arguing that the act is unconstitutional, gay rights groups brought a case before the judge earlier in May. Activists describe that it is unfair to allow benefits to straight couples but not to same-sex couples.
In Massachusetts., the attorney general’s offices is arguing that it is a state’s right to be able to define marriage. They claim that the Defense of Marriage Act could potentially deny couples Medicaid and several other same-sex couple benefits in Massachusetts.
Massachusetts has 15,000 same-sex couples that have married in the stated following the 2004 law making marriage legal for same-sex couples. There have been no indications of which side the rulings will favor.
David Weigel, a journalist who covers and blogs about conservatives and libertarian politics for the Washington Post, got into some controversy when tweeting about ‘bigots’ who fight against same-sex marriage. While he did retract from his endorsement of the term, he reiterated his opposition to laws which discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation:
I’m a bystander in the same-sex marriage debate — I haven’t given to any cause on either side. But in 2006 I did vote against a Virginia same-sex marriage amendment, which passed. I didn’t, and don’t, think social issues should be subjected to votes like that. I don’t support much direct democracy in general — this is a republic, and we shouldn’t throw these kinds of decisions to the electorate at large.But why was I willing to be so disrespectful to one group of activists? Unlike with most activists, I don’t really see the direct impact on their lives, or on the lives of the people who agree with them, of the cause they oppose. Antitax protesters are threatened by higher taxes. Anti-health-care-bill protesters fear their coverage will get worse. Anti-meat-eating protesters believe animals are being murdered and the environment is being made worse.
Even the birther movement has always made a kind of sense — oust Obama from office, and you get a chance to reverse what damage you think he’s done to your country.
But who’s threatened by legal same-sex marriage? Whose life is made worse? If there was science suggesting that children raised by same-sex parents are worse off than children raised by traditional families, that would be one thing, but I haven’t seen it. We’ve watched legal same-sex marriage in several European countries and several states, and it hasn’t ushered in some decline in the quality of life, or marriage, for those who don’t participate in it.
That’s what I don’t understand. That’s my bias, for now. I’ll happily entertain arguments for the contrary.
A Texas gay couple who was married in Massachusetts in 2006 filed for divorce last fall in a Dallas family court. Dallas Judge Tena Callahan, who accepted the case last fall, took a step further from granting the couple a divorce and ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage violates the U.S. Constitution. Texas has a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will argue that a Texas court can’t dissolve a marriage that it doesn’t recognize; oral arguments in the appeals case will be heard on Wednesday afternoon in a Dallas appeals court. Earlier this month a District judge in a Travis County (Austin, Texas) denied Attorney General Abbott request to intervene in a same-sex divorce case in that district
In other states where gay marriage is not legal, divorce by gay couples has met mixed results. In March, a Pennsylvania judge refused a case by two women who married in Massachusetts now seeking a divorce, while New York grants such divorces even though the state doesn’t permit same-sex marriage.
