Same-sex 'marriage' heads to high court

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Maryland's highest court is scheduled to hear arguments Monday on the same-sex "marriage" issue.

The case before the Maryland Court of Appeals comes from a lower court ruling in January in which a judge decided a 1973 statute defining marriage as between a man and woman violated the state constitution.

The ruling by Baltimore Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdock was stayed until the appeals court could hear the case.

"The momentum is definitely on the side of preserving marriage," said Glen Lavy, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, a national Christian legal organization involved in the case.

Same-sex "marriage" advocates acknowledge the overwhelming majority of voters and state courts are defining marriage as a union of one man and one woman, but say time is on their side.

"It took 13 state supreme courts to reject the idea that interracial marriage bans were unconstitutional before the California Supreme Court struck down the ban," said Dan Furmansky, executive director of Equality Maryland, a homosexual lobbying group in Annapolis. "Then it took 20 years before the United States Supreme Court struck them all down.

"We wouldn't be bringing this case if we didn't feel it was a matter of basic fairness," he said.

Winning the original suit, brought in 2004 by nine homosexual couples and one single homosexual, will be challenging because it seeks to change the law.

"People intuitively know that marriage is the union of a man and a woman and, despite preferences that some judges may have, unless they are completely willing to thumb their nose at the law, there is no question that marriage currently is between a man and a woman," Mr. Lavy said.

He also said Maryland residents should decide in a referendum vote the definition of marriage.

Voters in 27 states, including seven in the most recent election, voted to define marriage as between a man and a woman. In November, Arizona became the first state in which residents voted against a same-sex "marriage" ban.

In July, five state courts and one federal court issued rulings that upheld traditional marriage laws similar to those in Maryland.

To date, the only state to legalize same-sex "marriage" is Massachusetts. After Maryland, pending right-to-"marry" lawsuits remain in California, Connecticut and Iowa.

The Maryland Attorney General's Office will defend the state in the oral arguments.

In a court brief filed last week, the office defended Maryland's law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but indicated an openness to legislation that would pave the way for the legislation of the same-sex "marriage." The court also should defer to the Maryland General Assembly "where competing policies and their complexities could be balanced," the brief also stated. However, the office has decline to discuss the case before the arguments.

Kenneth Y. Choe, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys and with the American Civil Liberties Union, said he will appeal to three provisions of state law, but primarily he will point to the state's equal rights amendment.

"We are emphasizing that the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage is a great unfairness to families headed by gay and lesbian couples, and that unfairness is not tolerated by the Maryland constitution," he said.

• This story is based in part on wire service reports.