Gay Marriage Movement Dealt Further Blow
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OLYMPIA, Wash. — The Washington Supreme Court upheld the state’s ban on gay marriage yesterday, dealing the gay rights movement its second major defeat in less than a month in a liberal-leaning state that was regarded as a promising battleground.
The ruling leaves Massachusetts as the only state to allow gays to marry.
In a 5-4 decision, the court said lawmakers have the power to restrict marriage to a man and a woman, and it left intact the state’s 1998 Defense of Marriage Act. Earlier this month, New York’s high court dealt gay couples a similar blow when it upheld a state law against same-sex marriage.
In Connecticut, a judge found gay and lesbian couples had not been harmed by that state’s decision to grant them civil unions but not marriage.Vermont also allows civil unions that confer the same rights as heterosexual married couples.
Yesterday’s ruling surprised and delighted gay-marriage opponents, given Washington state’s liberal politics, particularly in Seattle.
“This is more than we could have imagined. We are shocked, and pleasantly shocked. We were prepared for the other direction,” the field director for the conservative Faith and Freedom Network, Jon Russell, said.
Disappointment was perhaps greatest in Seattle, home of the state’s most visible gay community. “There aren’t words to describe how hurt people in the gay and lesbian community are. There’s a lot of tears and a lot of anger right now. Emotion is raw,” a Seattle Democrat and one of four openly gay state lawmakers, state Rep. Ed Murray, said.
The state Supreme Court overruled two lower courts that had found the ban violated the Washington Constitution’s “privileges and immunities” section.
The gay-marriage ban “is constitutional because the Legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival,” Justice Barbara Madsen wrote in the controlling opinion.
However, Justice Madsen and other members of the majority invited the Legislature to take another look at the “clear hardship” that the ban causes for gay couples.
In a dissent, Justice Mary Fairhurst said the majority improperly bowed to public opinion. “Unfortunately, the [majority] are willing to turn a blind eye to DOMA’s discrimination because a popular majority still favors that discrimination,” she wrote.
