SAME-SEX MARRIAGE:AFTER LOSING at the polls, gay rights advocates filed a legal challenge in California Supreme Court to Proposition 8, a long-shot effort that the measure's supporters called an attempt to subvert the will of voters.
Lawyers for same-sex couples say they will argue that the anti-gay marriage measure was an illegal constitutional revision - not a more limited amendment, as backers said.
The legal action launched on Wednesday contends that Proposition 8 revises the state constitution by altering such fundamental tenets as equal-protection guarantees. A measure to revise the state constitution can be placed before voters only by the legislature instead of by popular petition.
Opponents of gay marriage expressed outrage at the move.
"This is exactly the type of behaviour that brought us to this position to begin with," said Proposition 8 co-chair Frank Schubert. "The people voted eight years ago overwhelmingly in favour of traditional marriage, and they seem to be saying in pretty strong terms again ... that they favour traditional marriage, and yet this is not accepted by gay rights activists.
"Now, if they want to legalise gay marriage, what they should do is bring an initiative themselves and ask the people to approve it. But they don't. They go behind the people's back to the courts and try and force an agenda on the rest of society."
But it is a matter of fairness, says Jenny Pizer, a staff lawyer with gay rights group Lambda Legal. "If the voters approved an initiative that took the right to free speech away from women, but not from men, everyone would agree that such a measure conflicts with the basic ideals of equality enshrined in our constitution. Proposition 8 suffers from the same flaw: it removes a protected constitutional right - here, the right to marry - not from all Californians, but just from one group of us," she said.
The state Supreme Court has twice before invalidated measures as illegal revisions, but some legal analysts expressed doubt that the Proposition 8 challenge would succeed. Similar attempts to overturn anti-gay marriage measures have failed in Oregon and Alaska.
- (LA Times-Washington Post service)