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16:26 - 14 March 2005
TOP STORY!!
California Court Rules Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional
YAY!!!



A California judge ruled today that the state's ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional, despite social traditions and historical definitions that "marriage" is a union between man and woman.

Judge Richard A. Kramer of San Francisco Superior Court held, in an opinion that will surely be appealed, that "no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners."

While many aspects of history, culture and tradition are properly embedded in the law, Judge Kramer wrote, the prohibition against same-sex marriage is not. "The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional," he wrote.

Today's ruling came in a lawsuit brought against the state by the City and County of San Francisco and a dozen same-sex couples who had been married there. The suit was filed after the State Supreme Court ordered San Francisco to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples because the practice violated state law.

That law is contrary to the spirit of the state Constitution, the plaintiffs argued, and today Judge Kramer agreed.

"Simply put, same-sex marriage cannot be prohibited solely because California has always done so before," the judge said

Attorney General Bill Lockyer has said he expected the case to reach the California Supreme Court, The Associated Press said. It may first go to the State Court of Appeals, or it is possible the high court will bypass the appeals court and take the case directly. In any case, Robert Tyler, a lawyer with the conservative Alliance Defense Fund, which joined the case in support of the ban on same-sex marriages, told The A.P. his group would undertake an appeal. Two bills are pending before the California Legislature that would put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the November ballot, The A.P. said. If California voters approve such an amendment, as did those in a dozen other states last year, the issue would largely be out of the reach of legislators and the courts.

Several trial judges around the country have ruled that bans on same-sex marriages violate state constitutions. But despite the intense interest in the issue nationwide, there is no obvious path - yet - for it to reach the United States Supreme Court, since state courts have the power to interpret their own respective state constitutions. But those bans could be put to a federal constitutional test if one state refused to grant legal recognition to same-sex couples who were legally married in another state.

Judge Kramer swept aside the State of California's argument that it was all right to define marriage strictly as a union between man and woman as long as same-sex couples enjoyed virtually the same rights as married couples.

"The idea that marriage-like rights without marriage is adequate smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts: separate but equal," he wrote, alluding to the doctrine long used to justify racial segregation that the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1954 had no place in public schools.

The judge also dismissed the state's argument that marriage has long been recognized as existing primarily for the sake of producing children. Judge Kramer said it was an "obvious natural and social reality that one does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to be married."

Setting aside the bar on same-sex marriage will not intrude on the state's legitimate regulation of marriage, like setting a minimum age for effective consent, the judge said. "Thus, the parade of horrible social ills envisioned by the opponents of same-sex marriage is not a necessary result from recognizing that there is a fundamental right to choose who one wants to marry," he wrote.

yay!!!

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