Posted on 02/19/2004 9:43:12 PM PST by kattracks
Defiant San Francisco sued the state of California claiming that laws barring the city from marrying same-sex couples are invalid and unenforceable.The suit is the latest twist in the explosive saga of the free-wheeling US city's move a week ago to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, despite California state laws allowing only one man and one woman to marry.
More than 2,800 same-sex couples have been officially wed since Mayor Gavin Newsom launched his hotly-contested campaign of civil disobedience to challenge what he says are unconstitutional and discriminatory statutes.
"The rights afforded by California's Constitution clearly trump laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples," San Francisco's top legal officer, City Attorney Dennis Herrera said after filing suit.
"San Francisco seeks an unequivocal declaration from the court that state provisions banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional," he said.
The counter-suit comes after two conservative groups on filed their own legal attacks on the same-sex marriages, seeking to have them immediately halted and to have unions already carried out to be declared invalid.
While two separate San Francisco judges declined the groups' demands for immediate injunctions, a second hearing in one of the cases was due Friday and could result in a court order halting the gay marriages that are drawing same-sex brides and grooms from across the country to San Francisco.
The city's suit contends that three sections of the California Family Code prohibiting marriage between gay couples are void, unconstitutional and unenforceable as they discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender.
Herrera said a declaration on whether banning same-sex marriages is unconstitutional was needed to ascertain whether the city was within its rights to issue marriage documents that have been altered to include the terms "spouse and spouse" instead of "bride and groom."
But, a day after US President George W. Bush and state Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger opposed the unions, California's top legal official said the state would not recognise same sex-marriages recorded on altered forms.
The Democratic Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that -- unlike Republicans Bush and Schwarzenegger -- he did not personally support unequal rights for sex-couples, he was bound to enforce the law.
"As a lifelong defender of civil rights, due process and equal protection for all, I do not personally support policies that give lesser legal rights and responsibilities to committed same-sex couples than those provided to heterosexual couples," he said.
"But the people of California have spoken. State law prohibits the recognition of same-sex marriages. It is the duty of my office to defend that law against this challenge by the City and County of San Francisco, and allow the courts to determine whether the city has acted illegally."
Former movie star Schwarzenegger was even more clear in a statement issued after the city filed suit.
"I will abide by the oath I took when I was sworn-in to uphold California's laws.
"The marriage certificates submitted to the Department of Health Services by the City and County of San Francisco fail to meet legal standards."
Meanwhile scores of same-sex couples from across the country lined up outside San Francisco city hall where officials were battling to cope with the matrimonial avalanche.
"I'm very excited. We are all trembling with emotion," said Molleen Matsumura moments after her 25-year-old daughter Ellen married her lesbian partner of three and a half years, Janelle Ishida.
"I had no idea I would ever see my daughter marry like this," she said after the ceremony at which family members held up cell phones to allow loved ones in other parts of America to hear the brief service.
"Until 1948 it was illegal for whites to marry Asians and I'm a white Jewish woman who wed a man of Japanese descent. Now its time for the next step -- same-sex marriages," Matsumura said.
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