Landmark Day in Gay Marriage Battle: Celebrations, Vows to Fight
A federal appeals court Tuesday overturned California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, in a narrow ruling that opponents hailed as historic and supporters immediately vowed to appeal.
The limited, California-only approach adopted by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals means the U.S. Supreme court might choose to steer clear of the dispute.
Meanwhile, the court left in place a stay preventing same-sex marriages from resuming in California.
The 2-1 decision found that the voters, in approving Proposition 8 in 2008, unfairly took away a right from a minority group.
“The people may not employ the initiative power to single out a disfavored group for unequal treatment and strip them, without a legitimate justification, of a right as important as the right to marry,” the panel majority said.
The court said the term “marriage” carries “extraordinary significance.”
“That designation is important because marriage is the name that society gives to the relationship that matters most between two adults,” the court said. “A rose by any other name may smell as sweet, but to the couple desiring to enter into a committed lifelong relationship, a marriage by the name of ‘registered domestic partnership’ does not.”
The court went on, “We are excited to see someone ask, ‘Will you marry me?,’ whether on bended knee in a restaurant or in text splashed across a stadium Jumbotron. Certainly it would not have the same effect to see ‘Will you enter into a registered domestic partnership with me?’
“Groucho Marx’s one-liner, ‘Marriage is a wonderful institution … but who wants to live in an institution?’ would lack its punch if the word ‘marriage’ were replaced with the alternative phrase,” the court said.
ProtectMarriage.com, which defended Proposition 8 with the help of Christian legal allies from the Alliance Defense Fund, immediately proclaimed their intention to appeal the 9th Circuit decision.