Same-Sex Marriage and a Level-Playing Field for Religious Argument
Chuck Donovan /
Last week, the evidentiary phase of the trial in Perry v. Schwarzenegger came to an end. Perry is the federal court lawsuit in California that claims, in effect, that the U.S. Constitution contains a right to same-sex marriage.
Specifically, the lawsuit challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the November 2008 amendment to the California constitution that effectively reversed a California high court decision redefining marriage to include homosexual unions.
If the claims asserted in this lawsuit prevail, the 45 states that recognize marriage as the union of husband and wife could be forced to make marriage genderless. Even the 30 states that have taken the extraordinary democratic measure of amending their constitutions to protect marriage – all of them since 1998 – could be forced to make marriage genderless.
The phase of the case that ended last week included testimony from witnesses called in support of or opposition to Proposition 8. Attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund, a public interest legal association that has played a key role in defending Prop 8, have posted updates on each day of the trial. The “Day 12” update by ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks explains what will happen next in the case: