The California Supreme Court got it right!

We’ve got them surrounded. Same-sex marriage is now legal on both the right and left coasts (Massachusetts and now California). Chief Justice Ronald George authored the landmark 4-3 ruling that was handed down today in San Francisco. “The California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples,” stated the court in a 121-page ruling. As with Massachusetts, the California Supreme Court got it right when it referred to marriage as a ‘basic civil right.’

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Contrary to what the right-wingers and the Christian Evangelicals would have you believe, we’re not looking for ‘special’ rights. We misguided gay folk are simply looking for the same rights afforded to our supposedly correct-thinking counterparts (read: heterosexuals). This is a topic I can write on extemporaneously because I’ve lived it every day for just about 54 years.

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My wife and I are in our sixteenth year together. We were legally married in Massachusetts on May 4, 2006 in a private ceremony in the office of the head of the Unitarian Church in Newburyport. The only other people at the ceremony were our children, now eleven and seven years old. Our children were not the product of a failed heterosexual marriage brought into a lesbian relationship. We had intended to have children from the beginning and our family was carefully planned. After the children were born, I adopted them so that my name could appear on their birth certificates.

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When we met, same-sex marriage was barely on the radar. In what was undoubtedly a symbolic event, we had a commitment ceremony in December 1992; we registered as a couple in Provincetown, Massachusetts the same year. We were married in a civil union in a gazebo in Brattleboro, Vermont, in 2002 (civil unions were recognized there in 2000). As a family, we have been through incredibly good and incredibly bad times together. Ultimately, that’s what same-sex couples are fighting for: The right to legitimately go through life’s ups and downs together.

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Now that this decision has gone in favor of same-sex marriage, those opposed to it will argue that this issue belongs on the ballot, not in the courts. They are wrong. It is not up to the public to arbitrarily vote whether or not to extend the basic civil rights guaranteed in each state constitution. On the other hand, however, it is the job of the court to interpret such laws should a challenge arise.

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Last 5 posts by

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