Federal judge overturns California gay marriage ban
A federal judge overturned California's same-sex marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually land before the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if gays have a constitutional right to marry in America, the Associated Press reports.
Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker made his ruling in a lawsuit filed by two gay couples who claimed the voter-approved ban violated their civil rights.
Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread.
"This is a victory for the American people. It's a victory for our justice system," said former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, who delivered the closing argument at trial for opponents of the ban.
He said the ruling "vindicates the rights of a minority of our citizens to be treated with decency and respect and equality in our system."
Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume immediately. Judge Walker said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents of the ban pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The judge ordered both sides to submit written arguments by Aug. 6 on the issue.
Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.
California voters passed the ban as Proposition 8 in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage.
Walker, however, found that the gay marriage ban violates the Constitution's due process and equal protection clauses while failing "to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license."
"Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," the judge wrote in his 136-page ruling.
Both sides previously said an appeal was certain if Walker did not rule in their favor. The case would go first to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, then the Supreme Court if the high court justices agree to review it.
Walker heard 13 days of testimony and arguments since January during the first trial in federal court to examine if states can prohibit gays from getting married.
The ruling puts Walker at the forefront of the gay marriage debate. The longtime federal judge was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.
The verdict was the second in a federal gay marriage case to come down in recent weeks. A federal judge in Massachusetts decided last month the state's legally married gay couples had been wrongly denied the federal financial benefits of marriage because of a law preventing the U.S. government from recognizing same-sex unions.
The plaintiffs in the California case presented 18 witnesses. Academic experts testified about topics ranging from the fitness of gay parents and religious views on homosexuality to the historical meaning of marriage and the political influence of the gay rights movement.
During trial, Olson told Judge Walker that tradition or fears of harm to heterosexual unions were legally insufficient grounds to discriminate against gay couples.
Olson teamed up with David Boies to argue the case, bringing together the two litigators best known for representing George W. Bush and Al Gore in the disputed 2000 election.
Defense lawyers called just two witnesses, claiming they did not need to present expert testimony because U.S. Supreme Court precedent was on their side. The attorneys also said gay marriage was an experiment with unknown social consequences that should be left to voters to accept or reject.
Former U.S. Justice Department lawyer Charles Cooper, who represented the religious and conservative groups that sponsored the ban, said cultures around the world, previous courts and Congress all accepted the "common sense belief that children do best when they are raised by their own mother and father."
In an unusual move, the original defendants, California Attorney General Jerry Brown and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, refused to support Proposition 8 in court.
That left the work of defending the law to Protect Marriage, the group that successfully sponsored the ballot measure that passed with 52 percent of the vote after the most expensive political campaign on a social issue in U.S. history.
Currently, same-sex couples can only legally wed in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.
Comments
Cheers!
Posted by: Dana LaRocca | August 4, 2010 6:27 PM
Oh, woe is me! What will become of my Projected American Principles?Why can't jurists see that Natural Law is the regnant law of the land even if we just can't say so openly. Of course we are pluralistic, as my Manhattan Declaration of the Rights of Conservatives avers, but surely pluralism shouldn't extend to the rights of people we don't like. Isn't that what Natural Law is all about. Can't anyone accept that I am a great thinker. Were all my books for naught.? Sigh! Poor Tom , my employee, looked confused and depressed too, and he immediately changed into his gray sweat pants on hearing the news.
I don't know what I will say to Maggie McGallagher. Ah well, maybe I will quote Stewart Smalley and say "Maggie, is there any way you can get to pound- cake?"
Posted by: Robert Georgeous | August 4, 2010 6:34 PM
The real minority being discriminated against in this ruling is heterosexuals on the down-low. This judge is tinkering with an age-old tradition for guaranteeing hot sex for straight guys. How are we going to enjoy having sex with guys, dirty, nasty "you don't know me" sex, if we are forced to come out of the closet and actually love men! Are they crazy! We may not love women either, but at least they get a good bargain. The Professor above is defending the right to hot down- low sex, and the limitation on who can be married is a big part of it. I believe in traditional values!
Posted by: The American Escapist | August 4, 2010 9:16 PM
As a newlywed, I say yeah! More love!
Posted by: Marf | August 4, 2010 9:29 PM
Beloved American Escapist,
Don't worry! Hot married lovin' can still be had! Just role play. You can be self-righteous finger-pointing "christian" and your hubby can be gasket-blowing fearmongering radio show host. And when you're done, you can kiss each lovingly as yourselves, wonder at each other's awesomeness and handsomeness and your luck at finding each other, and settle in for an evening of Netflix, like the rest of us married folks.
kiss, kiss
Posted by: Marf | August 4, 2010 11:10 PM
We are the champions, my friends, and we'll keep on fighting 'till the end:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSTivVclQQ0
PROP 8 RALLY THURSDAY, AUGUST 5TH AT 5:00PM at the corner of South Eutaw and West Pratt Street (next to the Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor, 110 South Eutaw Street, Baltimore, Maryland). Come celebrate with Equality Maryland!
Posted by: Dana LaRocca | August 5, 2010 12:47 AM
Manolo Blahnikleads the fashion trend in 2010.Don't miss these fashionManolo Blahnik Shoes,competitive price,discount now.
Posted by: Manolo Blahnik | August 5, 2010 4:06 AM
Hurrah for California & hurrah to Judge Walker. Justice is finally served. Prop 8 should have never been put before the people for a vote in the first place as that amounts to "the tyranny of the majority." I do hope that this brave judge has plenty of protection. He will be in need of bodyguards. Poor guy will probably have threats against his life and of his family as well.
Posted by: LouisVA | August 5, 2010 9:23 AM
Marf, being intimate with a "self-righteous finger-pointing "christian"" or a "fear-mongering radio show host" sounds really degrading to me. But then, some people are into that sort of thing. They call it S&M!
Posted by: Dana | August 5, 2010 10:29 AM
Dana,
The last time I attended a spontaneous rally in support of marriage equality, it was to protest and mourn the September 18, 2007, decision by the Maryland Court of Appeals to deny that equality to citizens of this State. I'll be at the rally tonight to celebrate yesterday's decision in California, hopeful that it signals the beginning of the process by which that error.
Posted by: BankStreet | August 5, 2010 11:47 AM
...is finally corrected.
Posted by: BankStreet | August 5, 2010 12:20 PM
they don't mess with maryland and bring that here,Marriage is a union between a Man and Woman period.
Posted by: kwolf443 | August 5, 2010 9:05 PM
Wolfman: Get over it. It's just love. Bell's will ring. The sun will shine.
...and we'll never be lonely anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtk1Su0BAnI
Posted by: Dana LaRocca | August 5, 2010 11:26 PM
This important and unfortunate ruling has been an opportunity for me to clarify my views on Catholicism and Liberalism, which I can do because, as Wikipedia now says of me, I have opposed conservatives. You see the very foundation and inspiration of the very notions of Liberalism, the Enlightenment can be given a special Catholic interpretation. According to one cleric of the past, whose words I quote with approval in NCR, we are dealing with "the seraglio of the Enlightenment." I concur with this Catholic view, the Enlightenment is an oppressive harem. It is not a great human attempt, flawed perhaps, to advance human liberty. No, it is locus of lustful whims of the powerful in the guise of thought. Let everyone keep in mind that this is what Liberal Catholics like myself think.
With this in mind it should come as no surprise that I, confirmed bachelor that I am, think that it was wrong for the judge to write his ruling in a way that emphasized privacy and individual right. Since Enlightenment ideas are just are just harem-lusts by another name, we Catholics don't want society to base its decisions on them. Therefore, my pooh-poohing of this decision is not a the treachery and traitorous self-hate it appears to be, it is like Jesus chasing the
vice-ridden from the Temple, except that we, the Church, are hoping to chase them from "the seraglio of the Enlightenment". Am I a great thinker or what?
Posted by: Michael Sean Wintersmix | August 6, 2010 12:25 PM
The were not as many at the rally as I thought there should have been. I don't think Equality Maryland got the word out very well. I stopped at the Hippo for a cold drink on my way home from the rally. I didn't speak to many people, but the one's I did speak to didn't even know about it.
Posted by: Dana LaRocca | August 6, 2010 1:45 PM
If you want a sign of the decay of the culture look at my life as Natural Law specialist. There was a time when it meant writing books with thinly veiled conservative programs implied in them. Now I have to take angry phone calls from Antonin Scarflia of the Supreme Court in the middle of the night! He was pissed because when I appeared on the News Hour on PBS trying to defend our side after the disastrous ruling in California, I mentioned him and stuck my foot in my mouth. . I have to appear smart and critical somehow nowadays, everyone considers me such a hack. So I noted the great irony that it was Scarflia's words in the Lawrence case that may be used by the other side. How else can I show that I am a critical philosopher and not a mere propagandist, which is what my Projected American Principles does. There is a need for holy propaganda. But I am more than that! Anyways, Scarflia was mad as hell. He actually said, "Don't get above yourself Natural Law boy!" Why are people so mean!!! Oh, the humanity!
Robert Georgeous, President
Projected American Principles, Inc.
Posted by: Robert Georgeous TV Alert | August 6, 2010 3:27 PM
Dana,
I didn't make it to the rally. The combination of looming thunder/downpour (which, as it turned out, didn't materialize) and my own sloth kept me home. I wish I'd gotten it together to go.
Posted by: BankStreet | August 6, 2010 6:02 PM
A lot of people missed the rally BankStreet. Equality Maryland put out their press release the previous day and planned a rally while most people were just leaving work.
Poor planning.
Posted by: Dana LaRocca | August 7, 2010 12:50 AM