BALTIMORE (ABP) — With a state judge's Jan. 20 ruling that Maryland's law banning same-sex marriage violates the state constitution, Maryland becomes the latest front in the nationwide battle over gay marriage.
Baltimore City Circuit Judge Brooke Murdock said a 1973 state law that says “only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid” is superseded by an amendment to the Maryland Constitution that provides broad protections against sex discrimination.
The state argued it had a vested interest in promoting traditional marriage in order to ensure healthier families and children.
But Murdock said the state's interest was not sufficient to continue disallowing gays to marry. “Tradition and social values alone cannot support adequately a discriminatory statutory classification,” she wrote. “When tradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest.”
State attorneys also argued that the law was not discriminatory because it treated men and women equally — neither is allowed to marry a person of the same sex.
But Murdock likened that argument to the one attorneys put forth to defend Virginia's law banning interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. In that 1967 decision, Virginia argued its ban was not discriminatory since it applied equally to Caucasians and African-Americans. The federal Supreme Court disagreed, declaring all bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional.
Murdock delayed enforcement of her decision pending an expected appeal from state officials, which followed almost immediately.
The decision may re-ignite a battle over whether to amend the Maryland Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. One effort to do so failed recently. But Gov. Robert Ehrlich (R), a moderate Republican, will likely face a difficult re-election campaign in 2006, and many political analysts believe he needs strong support from social conservatives in the state.
Shortly after the ruling, Ehrlich issued a statement vowing to fight it. “I firmly believe the institution of marriage is for one man and one woman only,” Ehrlich said.
Activists on both sides of the gay-marriage debate viewed the ruling as part of a continuing legal and political battle.
“This is emblematic of a concentrated effort across the country to cause social upheaval by abusing our court system,” read a statement from Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council. “This ruling will bolster efforts in Congress to vote on and pass a Marriage Protection Amendment.”
But one of the case's victors said the ruling was simply a logical move, given the precedent in Loving v. Virginia. “Same-sex couples need the same protections for their families that opposite-sex couples do,” read a statement from Ken Choe, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued the case. “The court was right to conclude that preventing same-sex couples from marrying is sex discrimination. The only reason Lisa Polyak can't marry her partner of 24 years, Gita Deane, is because she is another woman and not a man, as the court recognized, is unconstitutional.”
The ACLU and Equality Maryland, a statewide gay-rights group, filed the suit on behalf of Polyak and Deane as well as eight other same-sex couples from across the state.
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