"Obvious Natural & Social Reality"
Possibly the most quotable paragraph from Superior Court Judge Kramer's decision, released yesterday, finding that the State of California had no compelling interest to deny marriage to same-sex couples:
Thus, the cases cited by the plaintiffs do not establish that California courts have recognized that the purpose of marriage in this state is procreation. Instead, these cases establish that annulment is a remedy for the fraudulent inducment to marry. The facts in plaintiffs' cases also confirm the obvious natural and social reality that one does not have to be married in order to procreate, nor does one have to procreate in order to be married. Thus, no legitimate state interest to justify the preclusion of same-sex marriage can be found in plaintiff's cases.
["Tentative decision", Woo v. Lockyer, in the superior court of the state of California, country of San Francisco, by Judge Richard A. Kramer, available for download at LambaLegal.org.]
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Wednesday, 16 March 2005 at 03.23
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The plaintiffs failed to make their case but the outcome still begs a bunch of questions.
Americans need to have a national discussion in which we sort out the marriage of sacred vows uttered in church, to which so many Christians feel a proprietary sense of stewardship, and the secular concept of people joining their lives legally and emotionally.
Unfortunately, litigation neither substitutes for that nor hastens it. In this New Dark Age of neoconservative political dominance, I suspect that for fairness' sake it's a discussion best left to a future day.