In a major triumph for same-sex marriage in California, the state's Supreme Court struck the final blow against Proposition 8 Wednesday when a bid to revive the state's marriage ban was unanimously rejected by the court.
The court order follows the federal Supreme Court's June 26 decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry to defer to rule on a challenge to California's Proposition 8, the initiative defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman, saying those who proposed the ban had no legal standing to do so.
As the San Francisco Chronicle reports:
The first weddings took place June 28, after Gov. Jerry Brown ordered all 58 county clerks to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But because the nation's high court did not rule on Prop. 8's constitutionality, sponsors of the 2008 measure urged the California court to step in and declare that only the two same-sex couples who sued to overturn the law should be allowed to marry.
State officials replied that the federal court ruling was binding statewide, and the state's high court went along - in a July 15 order refusing to halt the weddings, and in Wednesday's final order dismissing the case.
"Gay and lesbian couples will continue to marry throughout California, and families will continue to be strengthened. Prop. 8 is gone for good," declared Adam Umhoefer, executive director of the American Foundation for Equal Rights--which represented the four now-married plaintiffs in the Supreme Court trial, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, and Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo.
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