Reasons abound for celebrating the California Supreme Court decision to allow same-sex marriages. At the top of the list of reasons to savor the victory is that the court, with a majority of Republican-appointed judges, set religious and conservative dogma aside by planting a flag recognizing significant human rights.
Overturning Proposition 22, the California Defense of Marriage Act of 2000 (known as the one man – one woman law) will finally let people of any sexual orientation walk down the aisle wearing veils of protected legitimacy.
The ruling that the law was unconstitutional squeezed through by only one vote, but has potential to spill into other states. In the national arena, Thursday’s decision could open the door wider to force same-sex issues on the U.S. Supreme Court docket.
The California Supreme Court reached into its own archives by comparing Thursday’s ruling to its landmark 1948 decision to overturn a ban on interracial marriages. That ruling eventually helped push the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling, declaring school segregation as unconstitutional.
It’s conceivably only a heartbeat away when a married same-sex couple pushes federal law on the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, which mandates that states have a somewhat uniform acceptance of laws passed in other states, including marriage.
The rights extended to non-traditional couples are important for many reasons. Filing joint income tax returns, sharing health care and insurance benefits, and the ability to adopt children are but a few reasons of legality cited in the ongoing effort to gain equality with traditional marriage ideology.
It’s too early to claim total victory in Proposition 22’s undoing, though. Only two states, Massachusetts (which legalized same-sex marriages in 2003) and now California, have displayed this compassion. Three other states have recently rejected the claim that their laws banning same-sex marriages are discriminatory.
Opponents to non-heterosexual nuptials are already stepping up the war rhetoric, insisting to run an exhaustive campaign with money, influence and pressure to outlaw same-sex marriage forever by way of a state constitutional amendment, as 27 other states have already done.
One faith-based lobbying group, the Alliance Defense Fund, likens the issue to an assault on traditional family values, as its website reads, “There is no more critical battle for our nation’s future. The fight is fierce, and will become even more heated before it’s over.”
Right-wing groups like the ADF and the National Organization for Marriage have already begun soliciting millions of dollars in contributions and pumping up members via their websites to get the amendment on the November ballot.
Equal civil and human rights has been long in the making and longer still in providing positive results. Fundamentalist beliefs should not dictate policy over how others share life, or how they celebrate it through sworn commitments to each other – by taking legally sanctioned vows like everybody else.
Duke Rescola is a senior journalism major and the opinions editor for the Daily Forty-Niner.
