California court rules gays are entitled to marry!

Marriage suffered a blow this week when the California Supreme Court ruled, by four votes to three, that state laws limiting marriage to the union of a husband and wife violate the state constitution. The narrow majority ruled that there is a fundamental constitutional right to same-sex marriage, and that creating civil unions as an alternative for same-sex couples, as California has done, amounts to a violation of the state equal protection laws.

Thursday's ruling by the Republican-dominated court affects more than 100,000 same-sex couples in the state, about a quarter of whom have children, according to US census figures, the Los Angeles Times says. It came after high courts in New York, Washington and New Jersey refused to extend marriage rights to homosexual couples. The only other court to grant such rights is the Massachusetts high court in 2003.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vetoed two measures that would have authorised same-sex marriage, says he will uphold the new ruling and will not support an amendment to the constitution that would attempt to ban same-sex marriage. In 2000, 61 per cent of California voters approved Proposition 22 which said that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognised in California". The proposition is now the subject of a referendum petition to amend the constitution. The petition has been submitted with 1.1 million signatures and Californians will have the opportunity to vote on it in November.

Says Maggie Gallagher of the Institute for American Values: "Most Americans understand that marriage is not bigotry. It is common sense -- unions of husband and wife have a unique status in law and culture because they really are different from other kinds of unions including in this way: they are uniquely necessary because they are the unions that both make new life and connect those children to their own mother and father."