“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples.”
With those words (as well as the words of Groucho Marx), 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judges Stephen Reinhardt and Michael Daly Hawkins have struck down California’s Proposition 8 outlawing marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, and set the stage for a showdown on the marriage issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling makes it clear that Prop. 8 was unconstitutional because it took away a right that had already been granted to gays and lesbians in the state, and carved out a special place of discrimination against such couples—rendering it a violation of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause.
At one point in their ruling, the judges got downright romantic pointing out that forcing gays and lesbians into a “registered domestic partnership” and denying them the word “marriage,” does so at the expense of the dignity of the couple. The judges agreed that “marriage” does have a special meaning, but that special meaning should apply to all marriages, not just those of the opposite sex.
“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. […] It is the designation of ‘marriage’ itself that expresses validation, by the state and community, and that serves as a symbol, like a wedding ceremony or a wedding ring, of something profoundly important.”
To prove their point, the justices used a few sentences of word play.
“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.”
It’s nice to see that the justices get it that “registered domestic partnerships” are not the same as marriage, even if they come with all the same rights and responsibilities.
In addition, the justices put to bed the notion that religious liberties are violated by marriage equality. Proponents of Prop. 8 had argued that the measure was needed to protect religious liberties, fearing that churches would be forced to perform same-sex marriages or penalized by the state if they refused. The court held that even before Prop. 8, “no religion [was] required to change its religious policies are practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant [was] required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.”
Instead, the justices noted, that argument is “more properly read as an appeal to the Legislature… and could not have been the reason for Proposition 8.”
The ruling also gently mocks the religious right’s worries that respect for same-sex marriages would have to be taught in California schools if Prop. 8 were overturned.
“But to protest the teaching of these facts is little different from protesting their very existence; it is like opposing the election of a particular governor on the ground that students would learn about his holding office, or opposing the legitimation of no-fault divorce because a teacher might allude to the fact if a course in societal structure were taught to graduating seniors. The prospect of children learning about the laws of the State and society’s assessment of the legal rights of its members does not provide an independent reason for stripping members of a disfavored group of those rights they presently enjoy.”
In the end, the justices ruled, Prop. 8 was designed not to protect anyone’s marriage or anyone’s religious beliefs. Instead, “it enacts nothing more or less than a judgment about the worth and dignity of gays and lesbians as a class.”
Prop. 8 supporters threw out every argument they could think of to defeat marriage rights for gays and lesbians, and each one of them from procreation to religious liberty to the special rights of heterosexuals to claim the word “marriage,” have been ruled as irrelevant.
As the case heads to the conservative leaning Supreme Court, though, another Groucho Marx line comes to mind: “I have nothing but confidence in you. And very little of that.”
