Word: gayes
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Next the question would be whether banning gay marriage achieves a legitimate government interest - and defenders of Prop 8 included more than a dozen such goals in a preview of their case filed last month. They argue that allowing same-sex marriage would weaken society and erode support for traditional marriage. They also say that it could lead to greater acceptability, and eventually legal recognition, of polygamy and marginalize the role of biological parents...
Some state courts have found that laws forbidding gay marriage achieve no legitimate interest at all. And others have ruled that while same-sex marriage bans may be rational, they can't survive a higher scrutiny that courts reserve for special classes of citizens - such as racial minorities and, on a more limited basis, women. No federal appeals court has so far held that gays and lesbians as a class are entitled to the special protection that requires heightened scrutiny of laws that discriminate on the basis of race or religion, for example. That may sound like a fine legal...
...Many people might be surprised to know that key issues about the legal status of gay people remain undecided in federal law," Jennifer Pizer, director of the National Marriage Project for Lambda Legal, told TIME. "Do all people have the same right to marry regardless of sexual orientation? ... Should sexual-orientation discrimination be considered a form of sex or gender discrimination? Judge Walker may decide some or all of these questions, and the Ninth Circuit may decide them differently. Whatever happens is likely to have great significance...
Defenders of Prop 8 say that laws reserving marriage for heterosexual couples don't discriminate against gays - instead they say they simply emphasize the meaning that the word marriage has had throughout history, a meaning they say wasn't seriously questioned until the past 10 years. "Save for a few brief months between the California Supreme Court's decision ... and the adoption of Proposition 8, California has from its inception always limited marriage to the union of a man and a woman," wrote Charles Cooper, who served in the Reagan Administration's Justice Department with Olson, in his trial brief...
...matter what happens, though, the issue of gay marriage won't be decided for good, no matter how far up the line this case goes. Gay marriage is legal in five states, and no decision by the U.S. high court would preclude other states from expanding those ranks. "It is definitely true that the case (even if unsuccessful) would not sound the death knell for same-sex marriage," Marcosson says. "States are permitted to do things that they are not required to do by the federal Constitution...