Gay rights victories
Top court allows marriage in Calif., spousal benefits
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court made history Wednesday with two actions that gave legal momentum to gay rights.
In a pair of high-profile cases, the divided court effectively struck down California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage. Separately, the court struck down a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies same-sex married couples federal benefits.
Together, the rulings were an emphatic, if incomplete, win for advocates of same-sex marriage.
The decisions address different issues, and neither declares a broad constitutional right to same-sex marriage that covers residents of all 50 states. But in each case, acting on the final day of the term that began last October, a slim 5-4 court majority endorsed a position that helps the same-sex marriage cause, as well as individual couples.
“We’re proud of you guys,” President
Barack Obama said in a broadcast telephone call from Air Force One to the two same-sex couples who had contested Proposition 8, “and we’re proud to have this in California.”
The Proposition 8 case involved a challenge to the 2008 California ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage. On Wednesday, the court concluded that the supporters of the California ban lacked the legal standing to defend the measure. Thus, the court could not consider the case.
For same-sex couples in California, the real-world result could be they’re able to secure marriage licenses within about 25 days, once an appellate court takes a necessary procedural step.
“As soon as they lift the stay, marriages are on. And wedding bells will ring,” California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris said.
“We’re elated,” Berkeley, Calif., resident Kris Perry — one of the individuals who challenged Proposition 8 — said at a news conference. “Now our children will finally be in a family where their parents are married.”
The four dissenting justices — one liberal and three conservatives — argued that the Proposition 8 opponents should be heard.
The Defense of Marriage Act case involved a challenge to the 1996 federal law that prohibits same-sex couples who’d been married under state laws from obtaining federal benefits.
A different majority from the one that ruled in the Proposition 8 case concluded that portions of the federal law violated the Constitution, as they undermine those states that have chosen to allow same-sex marriage.
“DOMA divests married same-sex couples of the duties and responsibilities that are an essential part of married life,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote.
“It tells those couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition. This places same-sex couples in an unstable position of being in a second-tier marriage,” Kennedy wrote.
Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act declares that, for the purposes of providing federal benefits, marriage is “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and a spouse is only a “person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” The definition is important because it determines eligibility for a host of federal rights, benefits and privileges.
The House of Representatives, which passed the bill by an overwhelming 342-67, explained in a committee report that it was meant to convey “moral disapproval of homosexuality.”
One of the law’s chief backers at the time, cur- rent Sen. Tom Coburn, R- Okla., said during the House debate that homosexual conduct was “based on perversion and … lust.”
Kennedy joined the court’s four liberal justices in the decision.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the c1ourt’s four conservatives, dissented.
“The Constitution does not forbid the government to enforce traditional moral and sexual norms,” Scalia wrote. Scalia said the lack of a uniform definition of marriage would cause many complications; for instance, for same-sex couples who must figure out their tax filing status when they move to another state.