Brown, Schwarzenegger Call for Same-Sex Marriages to Resume - Voter-approved Prop 8 outlawed gay marriage after the state Supreme Court legalized it.

Brown, Schwarzenegger Call for Same-Sex Marriages to Resume - Voter-approved Prop 8 outlawed gay marriage after the state Supreme Court legalized it.
Copyright by KTLA News
6:27 p.m. CDT, August 6, 2010
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ktla-prop-8,0,2902074.story


SAN FRANCISCO -- California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown filed motions Friday calling for the resumption of same-sex weddings.

The motions were filed after U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Proposition 8, California's voter-approved gay marriage ban, calling the measure "unconstitutional." Walker ruled that limiting marriage to a man and a woman serves no legitimate purpose and is an "artifact" rooted in "unfounded stereotypes and prejudices."

Walker has blocked gay marriages from immediately resuming until he can consider arguments on whether to keep the ban in effect while its supporters take their appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

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It was unclear when Walker would issue a ruling on that issue.

"Rather than being different, same-sex and opposite-sex unions are, for all purposes relevant to California law, exactly the same," Walker wrote in an unequivocal and strongly worded 136-page ruling.

"The evidence shows conclusively that moral and religious views form the only basis for a belief that same-sex couples are different from opposite-sex couples."

Currently, same-sex couples can legally wed only in Massachusetts, Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.

Legal experts believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately decide the question of whether gays and lesbian have a constitutional right to wed.