Judge: Virginia Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional
Posted: Friday, February 14, 2014 10:45 am | Updated: 10:59 am, Fri Feb 14, 2014.
by Erika Jacobson Moore
leesburgtoday.com
Just ahead of Valentine’s Day a federal judge yesterday ruled Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
In a 41-page opinion filed Feb. 13, Norfolk U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen ruled that the Virginia law that bans same-sex marriage, which was approved by the voters in 2006, is unconstitutional and denies people “their rights to due process and equal protection guaranteed under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States.”
The opinion was rendered in the Bostic v. Rainey case, brought by two couples, one that could not obtain a Virginia marriage license based solely on being of the same gender and another whose California marriage was not recognized in Virginia. Late last month new Attorney General Mark Herring (D) announced he would not defend the commonwealth’s marriage ban.
Allen opened her opinion with an excerpt from “Loving for All”, the public statement made by Mildred Loving on the 40th anniversary of her landmark case Loving v. Virginia, in which the Lovings challenged the commonwealth’s ban on interracial marriage.
In her opinion, Allen maintained that marriage is a “rigorously protected fundamental right” and that under Virginia’s marriage laws the plaintiffs “are deprived of that right to marry.”
“Gay and lesbian individuals share the same capacity as heterosexual individuals to form, preserve and celebrate loving, intimate and lasting relationships,” Allen writes. “Such relationships are created through the exercise of sacred, personal choices—choices, like the choices made by every other citizen, that must be free from unwarranted government interference.”
The judge also noted the Supreme Court’s rejection that “a prevailing moral conviction can, alone, justify upholding a constitutionally infirm law” and made reference to the Loving case, which was decided in 1967. Allen also took issue with the “for the children” rationale in the Virginia law, and the arguments made that “marriage is about children.” One of the couples that filed the suit has a child together.
“Of course the welfare of our children is a legitimate state interest,” Allen writes. “However, limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples fails to further this interest. Instead, needlessly stigmatizing and humiliating children who are being raised by the loving couples targeted by Virginia's Marriage Laws betrays that interest.”
Allen states in her conclusion that, “For those who choose to marry, and for their children, Virginia's laws ensures that marriage provides profound legal, financial, and social benefits, and exacts serious legal, financial, and social obligations… Government interests in perpetuating traditions, shielding state matters from federal interference, and favoring one model of parenting over others must yield to this country's cherished protections that ensure the exercise of the private choices of the individual citizen regarding love and family…
“Our nation's uneven but dogged journey toward truer and more meaningful freedoms for our citizens has brought us continually to a deeper understanding of the first three words in our Constitution: we the people. ‘We the People’ have become a broader, more diverse family than once imagined. Justice has often been forged from fires of indignities and prejudices suffered. Our triumphs that celebrate the freedom of choice are hallowed. We have arrived upon another moment in history when We the People becomes more inclusive, and our freedom more perfect.
“Almost one hundred and fifty four years ago, as Abraham Lincoln approached the cataclysmic rending of our nation over a struggle for other freedoms, a rending that would take his life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of others, he wrote these words: ‘It can not have failed to strike you that these men ask for just…the same thing—fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as in my power, they, and all others, shall have.’ The men and women, and the children too, whose voices join in noble harmony with Plaintiffs today, also ask for fairness, and fairness only. This, so far as it is in this Court's power, they and all others shall have.”...
...Former Virginia governor Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) called it a “Happy Valentine’s Day…to all Virginians…I campaigned against the ban in 2006 and was very disappointed when it passed. Today, we celebrate a Virginia for lovers and remember the great Shakesperian wisdom: ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments.’” |
