California Supreme Court: Gay Marriage Constitutional
Today California became the second state to allow same-sex marriage when the state Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to strike down a gay marriage ban.
“In view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship,” Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote of marriage for the majority, “the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”
California already has a strong domestic partnership law that gives gay and lesbian couples nearly all of the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage. The majority said that is not enough.
Given the historic, cultural, symbolic and constitutional significance of the concept of marriage, Chief Justice George wrote, the state cannot limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. The court left open the possibility that another terms could denote state-sanctioned unions so long as that term was used across the board.
The state’s ban on same-sex marriage was based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000, both defining marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman. The question before the court was whether those laws violate provisions of the state Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights.
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May 15, 2008
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12:01 p.m.
May 15, '08
Hooray!
12:08 p.m.
May 15, '08
This is huge -- as is California.
Interesting that they had an anti- law as early as 1977. I wonder if it was part of the anti-ERA campaign? Same-sex marriage was one of evils it was held to lead to by opponents, I believe. And the marriage rights movement for same sex couples pretty much dates from the 1990s, doesn't it?
Does the idea of the "substance" of a constitutional right have any implication for legal reasoning elsewhere?
Is this going to rouse the right to support McCain?
May 15, '08
Yeah!
Now two states guarantee civil rights for all Americans - Massachusetts and California. And a third - New York - recognizes marriages performed in other states and jurisdictions (e.g., Canada, Denmark, Spain, South Africa, etcetera..).
Oregon, of course, still lags behind with its two-tiered system: 1. Marriage for straight citizens, and 2. the lesser "domestic partnerships" for their gay and lesbian neighbors, family members, co-workers and friends.
Perhaps a less anemic Attorney General will work to ensure that state constitutional guarantees of equal protection are actually applied to every Oregonian.
But now that the peculiar prejudice of Catholics, Mormons, and Protestants is written in the state constitution (with passage of Measure 36), it may take a Supreme Court decision, as in Loving versus Virginia (1967), which overturned similar, religiously inspired anti-miscegenation laws and amendments throughout the land.
Go California!
1:05 p.m.
May 15, '08
New Mexico also recognizes civil unions and marriages conducted in other states.
May 15, '08
This closes the loop the Cal Supremes began thirty years ago when they banned housing discrimination against unmarried couples.
May 15, '08
Great!
Relevant excerpt from New York Times obituary for Mildred Loving... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/06/us/06loving.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
May 6, 2008 Mildred Loving, Who Battled Ban on Mixed-Race Marriage, Dies at 68
By DOUGLAS MARTIN Mildred Loving, a black woman whose anger over being banished from Virginia for marrying a white man led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling overturning state miscegenation laws, died on May 2 at her home in Central Point, Va. She was 68.
Peggy Fortune, her daughter, said the cause was pneumonia.
The Supreme Court ruling, in 1967, struck down the last group of segregation laws to remain on the books — those requiring separation of the races in marriage. The ruling was unanimous, its opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who in 1954 wrote the court’s opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, declaring segregated public schools unconstitutional.
In Loving v. Virginia, Warren wrote that miscegenation laws violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause. “We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race,” he said.
By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”
Mrs. Loving answered, “I’m his wife.”
Mr. Loving pointed to the couple’s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, “That’s no good here.”
...
Mrs. Loving stopped giving interviews, but last year issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of the announcement of the Supreme Court ruling, urging that gay men and lesbians be allowed to marry.
2:06 p.m.
May 15, '08
O happy day! Nice to have an unqualified victory for common sense and human decency for a change.
8:24 p.m.
May 15, '08
Oregon Bill wrote "Oregon, of course, still lags behind with its two-tiered system: 1. Marriage for straight citizens, and 2. the lesser "domestic partnerships" for their gay and lesbian neighbors, family members, co-workers and friends."
Lesser? That's kinda silly, Bill. The only difference between gay "marriage" in California, following this ruling, and gay "domestic partnership" in Oregon is the name. If you actually read the Oregon Family Fairness Act, Bill, you'll learn that every right and responsibility available to "married" people under Oregon law is equally available to "domestic partners". Literally the only difference, under Oregon State law (the only law the State of Oregon can change or control) is the name.
There are plenty of us GLBT people who are happy to take legal substance over style, particularly when "marriage" is also a religious institution with which same-sex couples have no history. If we in the LGBT community cannot respect that many straight people feel an attachment to the religious institution of marriage, as applying specifically to female/male couples (which it virtually always has in every major religion on the planet), how can we expect respect in return? If we have identical rights and responsibilities (which we do, under State law, the only law Oregon can change), why be afraid of creating our own social and spiritual institutions? Why must we imitate heterosexuals?
May 15, '08
Good for California and its well informed Supreme Court. However, until all couples are treated equally under IRS, ERISA and Social Security laws, this is only a small victory.
As a heterosexual in a 30+ year relationship, it disgusts me that my friends and family cannot enjoy the same degree of security and support as my wife and I share. When I die she will share my SS. Or vice versa. Our gay and lesbian friends cannot enjoy the same protection, regardless of state laws or court decisions. But I guess it is one step at a time. Good job California.
May 15, '08
If only. But my marriage (performed in secular Canada, in 2003) is now recognized by California, Massachusetts, New York, New Mexico, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, etc...
Your Oregon "domestic partnership" rights vanish instantly at the state border... At least I have a few U.S. states where state (but not federal) rights are acknowledged, and several countries where I'm welcome as an equal human being.
And notably, even within Oregon, there is significant confusion about which rights are conferred by "domestic partnerships." I heard two moms were denied the right to add their names to their own child's birth certificate (@ Providence St. Vincent's) after passage of that landmark bill...
But consider that interracial couples - once damned by those thick, prejudiced preachers you'll now find in the Catholic Archdiocese, and the Albina Ministerial Alliance - weren't so welcome to share in equal marriage rights either.
At one time or another, 38 states had miscegenation laws, routinely backed by threats of some angry gawd's wrath, regularly spewed from pulpits. As Martin Luther King Jr. noted in 1958, “When any society says that I cannot marry a certain person, that society has cut off a segment of my freedom...”
Thankfully the California Supreme Court, unlike Oregon voters, gets it. Government is required by our secular, human derived constitutions to offer basic rights to all - as the federal Supremes declared unequivocally in Loving vs. Virginia back in 1967.
And it will probably take a future federal Court ruling to remove the stain of Catholic/Christian/Mormon bigotry now written into Oregon's constitution with the passage of Measure 36... In the meantime Leo, I'll take my Canadian marriage, newly welcome in California, over your anemic DP limited to - well, here.
May 15, '08
From Slate.com http://www.slate.com/id/2191530/
Writing for the California high court, Chief Justice Ronald M. George first found that the exclusion of gays from marriage violated their fundamental right to marry, thereby drawing strict scrutiny from the court. This meant that the state would have to produce a compelling reason to bar gays from what the court deemed "the most socially productive and individually fulfilling relationship that one can enjoy in the course of a lifetime."
*** In a crucial move, Chief Justice George rejected the state's argument that tradition was such a reason. Allowing tradition to thus entrench itself, he said, would have allowed for laws barring interracial couples. And, as he noted, the California Supreme Court struck down a ban on interracial marriage in 1948, almost two decades before the U.S. Supreme Court did in Loving v. Virginia.
May 15, '08
Don't get too giddy, cowgirls. Gay "Rights" are short lived. We've got more money, time and smarts than your movement will ever know about. Have your fun, but don't try and make me swallow it. Respect you shall have, but never from force.
May 16, '08
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Oregon Bill.
Leo Schuman's posting reminds me of the cretinous gay couple who did the pro-36 TV ad announcing that they didn't need marriage (or domestic partnership) because they'd seen a lawyer and gotten all the benefits of marriage without state recognition.
One of my major groan moments in coverage outside the CA Supreme Court building came when a spokesman for the anti-marriage forces inveighed against "judicial activism" when, he said, this decision should have been enacted as a law "not as a judicial order." I would remind them and Jon that the California legislature has passed just such laws twice only to have Gov. Schwarzenegger veto them.
Speaking of Jon, the Freudianism in "don't try and make me swallow it" is a great chuckle to start the morning. Jon's allies may have "more money [and] time" than my movement will ever know about but we're really really clear about your "smarts." Beginning a post with "Don't get too giddy, cowgirls..." and ending it with "Respect you shall have..." gives a pretty clear picture of the levels of intelligence and intellectual integrity we can expect from his peeps.
May 16, '08
As a heterosexual in a 30+ year relationship, it disgusts me that my friends and family cannot enjoy the same degree of security and support as my wife and I share. When I die she will share my SS. Or vice versa. Our gay and lesbian friends cannot enjoy the same protection, regardless of state laws or court decisions. But I guess it is one step at a time. Good job California. ( Dido and add=== What are people so afraid of? I don't get it, everyone who pays TAXES should have the same RIGHTS - ALL-the Federal level too!!!! The whole world will not collapse if we were all afforded the RIGHTS -now would it? This is the 21st Century People Step UP ++++++++ KR Nevada
May 16, '08
As a heterosexual in a 30+ year relationship, it disgusts me that my friends and family cannot enjoy the same degree of security and support as my wife and I share. When I die she will share my SS. Or vice versa. Our gay and lesbian friends cannot enjoy the same protection, regardless of state laws or court decisions. But I guess it is one step at a time. Good job California. ( Dido and add=== What are people so afraid of? I don't get it, everyone who pays TAXES should have the same RIGHTS - ALL-the Federal level too!!!! The whole world will not collapse if we were all afforded the RIGHTS -now would it? This is the 21st Century People Step UP ++++++++ KR Nevada