By Bob Roehr
The Georgia Supreme Court needed little time to swat down a lower-court ruling that had thrown out that state's ban on same-sex marriage. The July 7 decision was but a handful of pages long.
The case turned on the technical point of whether the constitutional amendment put to the voters in 2004 violated the 'single-subject rule' by banning both same-sex marriage and civil unions. A lower-court judge said that it did and threw the amendment out.
Writing for a unanimous court, Justice Robert Benham said the principal objective of the amendment was 'reserving marriage and its attendant benefits to unions of man and woman.' The inclusion of civil unions in the ban was not 'dissimilar and discordant.'
The court also read the political tea leaves. The amendment had passed with 76 percent of the vote. The storm of political reaction to the lower-court decision moved them to act expeditiously, scheduling a review much earlier than would be normal. The ruling surprised no one.
ILLINOIS: Illinois may have dodged the prospect of facing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the ballot in November. It appears that proponents did not turn in a sufficient number of valid signatures to qualify.
The State Board of Elections has given proponents until Aug. 11 to demonstrate that their sampling and analysis of signatures is incorrect.
It also has scheduled an Aug. 14 hearing on challenges to those signatures. 'We looked at every signature and they don't have enough registered voters who signed these petitions,' said Rick Garcia, political director of the LGBT group Equality Illinois. ( See story by Amy Wooten in this issue. )
CALIFORNIA: The California Court of Appeals was scheduled to hear oral arguments on July 10 to legal challenges banning same-sex marriage. Those lawsuits grew out of the marriages performed in San Francisco in 2004.
A trial court already has struck down the ban as a violation of the state constitution. The legislature has approved gay marriage but the measure was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
MASSACHUSETTS: The legislature is scheduled to meet in a joint session as a constitutional convention on July 12. It may address a citizens petition to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot defining marriage as between a man and a woman. That requires 50 of 200 votes at both this session and a subsequent session in 2007, in which case the amendment would be on the 2008 ballot.
However, it is unclear if the body will have sufficient time to reach this item if it is number 20 on the agenda or if procedural measures will be allowed to kill it.
ARIZONA: Protect Marriage Arizona, a group promoting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in that state, turned in thousands of petitions to get the issue on the November ballot, claiming that it amassed more than the required 183,917 signatures. The signatures will need to be verified.
— With contributions from Andrew Davis
