Pacific Views

Those weddings in San Francisco.

The LA Times has a very good article about what California courts will have to take into account when ruling on the legality of SF's same-sex marriages.

California has enacted two domestic partnership laws in recent years giving gay couples many of the rights that married couples enjoy. The second of the two laws, adopted last year, says as a matter of state policy that stable unions among gay couples are a benefit to society.

That declaration could complicate the case for opponents of gay marriage. Someone going to court to invalidate marriage licenses issued in San Francisco would have to provide judges some reason why the state should be allowed to restrict marriages to heterosexual couples despite the state Constitution's equal rights guarantee ...

The argument on the other side is that San Francisco's actions clearly flout the will of the state's voters.

When Proposition 22 was approved, "the people of California reaffirmed that marriage was properly limited to a man and woman," said Douglas Kmiec, a constitutional law professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu. What San Francisco officials are doing is "a lawless act," he said.

In court Friday, lawyers for the Alliance Defense Fund made that argument. But San Francisco Chief Deputy City Atty. Therese Stewart said the group had not shown that its members would suffer any "irreparable harm" if the weddings went ahead, one of the key requirements for obtaining an injunction.