California backs gay marriages
Pastor Dale Morgan
*California backs gay marriages*
* Daniel Nasaw in Washington
* The Guardian,
* Friday May 16 2008
The California supreme court yesterday ruled that same-sex couples have
a constitutional right to marry, a decision that is sure to resonate in
the presidential campaign and congressional elections.
In a 4-3 decision, the court overturned a voter-approved ban on same-sex
marriage, and found that domestic partnerships are not a suitable
substitute for marriage. The opinion, written by chief justice Ron
George, cites a 1948 case overturning a ban on inter-racial marriage.
The court rejected arguments that marriage should be preserved for
heterosexual couples because it had been so traditionally. "History
alone is not invariably an appropriate guide for determining the meaning
and scope of this fundamental constitutional guarantee," it wrote.
The city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples, and gay
rights groups sued in March 2004 after the court halted San Francisco's
month-long same-sex wedding march.
"Our state now recognises that an individual's capacity to establish a
loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and
responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the
individual's sexual orientation," the court wrote.
The state's attorney general argued that California's
domestic-partnership law afforded the same substantive rights as
marriage, but the court found the separate nomenclature risks denying
same-sex couples "equal dignity and respect".
Associate justice Marvin Baxter said the court had overreached its
authority. "Nothing in our constitution, express or implicit, compels
the majority's startling conclusion that the age-old understanding of
marriage ... is no longer valid," he wrote.