US: Massachusetts is to be the first state in the United States to allow full same-sex marriage after an historic court ruling on Wednesday. It further strengthens a ruling of November 18th last, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court found the state's prohibition of gay marriage to be unconstitutional, writes Ian Kilroy in Boston
Opponents to the November ruling in the state legislature had hoped to reach a compromise, putting forward a bill that would allow lesser "civil unions" for gays, rather than full "marriage".
However, in a tight 4-3 ruling on Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected the legislature's bill. "The bill maintains an unconstitutional, inferior, and discriminatory status for same-sex couples," the Supreme Court Chief Justice, Margaret Marshall, wrote, ruling for the majority. "The history of our nation has demonstrated that separate is seldom, if ever, equal."
Democratic presidential front-runner Senator John Kerry said yesterday he favored homosexuals entering into civil unions and disagreed with the court ruling.
The wording and argument of the ruling echoed the 1954 US Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation in US schools. The first marriage licences to be issued to gay couples in Massachusetts will be issued on May 18th, exactly 50 years to the day after the Brown vs Board of Education decision that desegregated US education.
Opponents to gay marriage still plan to fight the ruling. Next Wednesday, Massachusetts lawmakers will meet to consider a proposed amendment to the constitution that would define marriage as a union only between members of the opposite sex.
However, as such an amendment could only go to a popular vote in 2006 at the earliest, it would be long eclipsed by the reality of hundreds of gay marriages in the intervening time.
Nevertheless, Massachusetts Governor, republican Mitt Romney, says he intends to go the amendment route. "The people of Massachusetts should not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to our society as the definition of marriage," he said.
The supreme court in British Columbia has ruled that a teacher's freedoms were not violated when he was suspended for writing letters critical of homosexuality to a newspaper. "Discriminatory speech is incompatible with the search for truth," the court ruled. - (Reuters)