Connecticut Supreme Court Overturns Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
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The Supreme Court of the state of Connecticut has ruled a lower-court ruling forbidding same-sex marriage violates the constitutional rights of homosexual citizens. The ruling makes Connecticut the third state to provide for legalization of same-sex marriage, after Massachusetts and California. This November, California voters will decide on whether the state’s constitution can be amended to ban same-sex marriages.
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled on Friday that same-sex couples have the right to marry, reversing a lower court decision that had concluded that the civil unions legalized in the state three years ago offered the same rights and benefits as marriage.
The ruling has upset conservative opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples, but the Constitution of the United States requires “equal protection under the law” for all citizens, a requirement no state constitution can run contrary to. Opponents vow to push for a Constitutional amendment, but observers say the trend seems to be increasingly to protect against such bans that impact the private sphere of individual citizens.
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The majority opinion reads that:
segregation of heterosexual and homosexual couples into separate institutions constitutes a cognizable harm [given] the history of pernicious discrimination faced by gay men and lesbians, and because the institution of marriage carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil unions does not embody.
The ruling suggests that civil unions, specifically because they lack the ceremonial lustre of matrimony, are not sufficient to provide equal rights to homosexual couples who make a life together. Some proponents of speeding the process toward equality before the law for heterosexual and homosexual unions have suggested the solution would be to make all such civil ceremonies civil unions, leaving marriage to the religious community, for each denomination to decide as it sees fit.
The governor, Republican M. Jodi Rell, had opposed equating same-sex civil unions to marriage, and had demanded that Connecticut’s civil union legislation include a clause defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but she conceded, in light of the Supreme Court’s decision, that:
I do not believe their voice reflects the majority of the people of Connecticut. However, I am also firmly convinced that attempts to reverse this decision, either legislatively or by amending the state Constitution, will not meet with success. I will therefore abide by the ruling.
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