Same-Sex Marriage Now Legal in UTAH

[GoodFella69]

Of all possible places, I would never have foreseen gay and lesbian couples being united in marriage today in conservative, red-state Utah: http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home3/57291925-200/ban-judge-sex-court.html.csp

 

Perhaps there really is a Santa Claus.

 

Goodfella

[Decatur Guy]

If it somehow sticks, it's the beginning of the end of that law in any state.

[Phil_musc]

I've always thought the argument made about marriage being a fundamental right that must be available to everyone should be the one that we should use. To me it appears to be an equal protection of the law issue.

 

But this decision was rendered at the district level and could be overturned on jurisdictional grounds since marriage laws are still set by the state and not the feds. It will be interesting to see how this evolves. I'm guardedly optimistic. And I think I'll go write a check to Lambda Legal right away.

[uwsman2]

This decision held that Utah's ban on same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution. The judge acknowledges that the states, in the first instance, control who can marry, but points out that the states may not exercise that control in an unconstitutional manner. Example - Virginia (and about 17 other states) still prohibited interracial marriages in the 1960s, and the Supreme Court struck that down as unconstitutional. So this won't be overturned on jurisdictional grounds. It might be reversed because the 10th Circuit disagrees with the district judge about the constitutional issue, but the district judge did a great job of relying on Scalia's dissenting opinions in the sodomy and DOMA cases, where he predicted that the Court had opened up the way to same-sex marriage.