The administration’s brief to the Supreme Court was a legally and symbolically important repudiation of Proposition 8, the 2008 voter referendum that amended California’s Constitution to forbid bestowing the title of marriage on a union between two people of the same sex — a right the California Supreme Court had found to be fundamental under the State Constitution.
Like the arguments made by the lawyers for those who seek to overturn Proposition 8, and by a group of prominent Republicans earlier this week, the government’s brief says any law attempting to ban same-sex marriage must be subjected to heightened scrutiny because it singles out a class of Americans, historically subject to discrimination, for unequal treatment.
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The government made mincemeat of the argument that same-sex couples threaten “traditional” marriage. “Petitioners’ central argument is that Proposition 8 advances an interest in responsible procreation and child-rearing because only heterosexual couples can produce ‘unintended pregnances’ and because the ‘overriding purpose’ of marriage is to address that reality by affording a stable institution for procreation and child-rearing,” the brief said. “But, as this court has recognized, marriage is far more than a societal means of dealing with unintended pregnancies.”
Proposition 8, it said, neither promotes opposite-sex parenting nor prevents same-sex parenting. In any case, “the overwhelming expert consensus is that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.”
The White House Joins the Fight on Gay Marriage - NYTimes.com
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