Judge Stephen Reinhardt

by Jeremy Leaming

Though leaders of the Maryland Senate have delayed consideration of Gov. Martin O’Malley’s marriage equality bill, The Washington Post reports the measure is still expected to pass the chamber and reach the governor by week’s end.

The Senate’s Minority Whip Edward R. Reilly (R-Anne Arundel), the newspaper reports, obtained the delay so amendments to the equality measure could be prepared. Senate President Thomas Miller Jr. said he expects the measure to pass the Senate, as it did last year.

O’Malley (pictured) is pushing hard to add Maryland to the list of states that have legalized same-sex marriage. Following last week’s approval of the measure by the Maryland House of Delegates, the governor said “we’re prepared to redouble our efforts” as the Senate considers the measure.

“The common thread,” he continued, “running through our efforts together in Maryland is the thread of human dignity; the dignity of work, the dignity of faith, the dignity of family, the dignity of every individual.”

As in Washington, where Gov. Chris Gregoire recently enacted marriage equality legislation, Christian evangelical lobbyists in Maryland are vowing to drag marriage equality before voters, if need be.

The Maryland Marriage Alliance, representing a gaggle of Christian evangelical interests, is loudly arguing that marriage must remain exclusive to men and women. In a missive on the group’s website, it claims that houses of worship that refuse to conduct weddings for gays and lesbians will place their tax benefits in jeopardy. Maryland’s equality bill, however, contains and exemption for houses of worship, much like the one that passed last year in New York. The Md. bill explicitly states that houses of worship, which receive generous government tax benefits, can play be different rules, and discriminate against gays and lesbians if they wish.

by Jeremy Leaming

In a striking, though perhaps short-lived, victory for marriage equality, a federal appeals court panel invalidated California’s infamous Proposition 8, a ballot initiative that had overturned same-sex marriage in the state.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2 -1 today that the anti-equality measure “served no purpose, and no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians,” the Los Angeles Times reports. The Ninth Circuit majority concluded that Prop. 8  subverts the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Prop. 8 was passed, with the backing of religious right organizations, not long after the California Supreme Court ruled that a right to wed could not be denied to same-sex couples, and that doing so would violate the equal protection rights of lesbians and gay men. Prop. 8 amended the state constitution to bar same-sex marriage.

The majority opinion in Perry v. Brown, written by Judge Stephen Reinhardt (pictured) upheld a lower federal court ruling by retired federal judge, Vaughn R. Walker, which invalidated Prop. 8.

“Proposition 8 worked a singular and limited change to the California Constitution: it stripped same-sex couples of the right to have their committed relationships recognized by the State with the designation of ‘marriage,’ which the state constitution had previously guaranteed them, while leaving in place all of their other rights and responsibilities as partners – rights and responsibilities that are identical to those of married spouses and form an integral part of the marriage relationship,” Reinhardt wrote.

Prop. 8 also resulted in an ignoble state constitutional rule that protected marriage only for straight couples, Reinhardt said.

“In adopting the amendment, the People simply took the designation of ‘marriage’ away from lifelong same-sex partnerships, and with it the State’s authorization of that official status and the societal approval that comes with it,” Reinhardt wrote.