A cultural watershed
Gays are constitutionally afforded the right to marry, the California Supreme Court ruled today.
Click below for a full recap of the events, the implications and the future.
This is, of course, a historic day, no matter what side of this issue you fall on. California, in living up to its progressive leadership reputation and history, becomes just the second state in the country to make this move.
The Supreme Court's opinion will be studied and referenced for decades by historians and legal scholars. What the four-judge majority essentially argued is that being gay is an immutable characteristic, like being black or white or short or tall, and that being different is not grounds for being denied the fundamental right of marriage.
The court also built its legal reasoning on a 1948 case that lifted the ban on interracial marriage in California, explicitly interracial with inter-gender unions.
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The Brief
What happened: The California Supreme Court ruled Thursday that same-sex couples have a constitutionally protected right to marry. California joins Massachussettes as the second state open marriage to gay couples.
The rationale: In a 172-page opinion, a 4-3 majority noted that interracial marriage illegal in California as recently as 1948, and interpreted the Constitution as extending to gays a "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship."
What's next: The rulling is set to take effect in 30 days, opening county courthouses to receipt of applications for same-sex marriage licenses. But opposition groups are expected to have enough signatures to put a measure on this November's ballot to change the constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, which could invalidate the court ruling.
By Robert Rogers
Staff Writer
In what supporters hailed as a historic ruling, the California Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that gay men and women have a constitutional right to marry.
The decisions makes California the second state in the nation to sanction same-sex marriage.
In a tight 4-3 ruling, the majority asserted that laws banning same-sex marriage were tantamount to long-since invalidated prohibitions to interracial marriage.
The county Auditor/Controller-Recorder's office Hospitality Lane did not comment but an operator there said they would be able to handle same-sex applications in 30 days, if so ordered.
The ruling overturns two state laws that restricted marriages to unions between a man and a woman.
Members of the Bay area-based legal teams that brought the court case said the ruling was a sweeping expansion in the rights and equality of gay and lesbian citizens.
"This is a moment of pure happiness and joy for so many families in California," said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the lead council who argued the case on behalf of 14 same-sex couples and two advocacy organizations.
In a Thursday morning conference call with reporters, Minter was joined by San Francisco city attorneys, the American Civil Liberties Union's northern California director and same-sex couples who were litigants in the case.
Minter said the court's majority based their decision on twin legal precedents: That gays and lesbians have the same rights afforded interracial couples, which had been banned from marrying until Perez v. Sharp in 1948, in which California became the first state to overturn laws prohibiting interracial marriage.
Second, the court based their decision on a judgment that the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause safeguarded the rights of same-sex couples to marry.
San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera likened the decision to a major victory in the struggle for Civil Rights, and paraphrased Martin Luther King Jr.
"The arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice," Herrera said.
The court, Herrera said, "took a bold leap" in its decision.
In his 172-page opinion, Chief Justice Ronald M. George repeatedly noted the evolving nature of marriage, and likened the state's attempt to limit its scope to opposite sex couples as an infringement on basic civil rights.
"... core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish -- with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life -- an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage," George wrote.
The victorious attorneys acknowledged that uncertainty still clouds the issue.
Organizations opposing same-sex marraige are expected to submit more than 1 million signatures for an initiative to amend the state Constitution to specifically outlaw same-sex marraige.
With about 700,000 validated signatures, the measure would get on the November ballot, threatening to override the court.
National Organization for Marriage-California issued a press release soon after the decision touting polls showing more than 50 percent of California voters oppose same-sex marraige. In a prepared statement, the "traditional" marraige advocacy group's Director Brian Brown said even higher majorities of ethnic minorities oppose same-sex marraige.
"Large majorities including 60 percent of Latinos, 58 percent of African-Americans and 57 percent of Asian-Americans oppose same-sex marriage in California," Brown said in a prepared release.
Still, the immediate impact should be substantial for the more than 200,000 same-sex couples statewide, the attorneys said.
The opinion, with its unequivocal declaration that bans on same-sex marraige infringe on the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship," is likely to trigger a wave of marraige license applications for same-sex couples when the the decision takes effect in 30 days.
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