RIGHTS-US: Court Hears Case for Homsexual Marriage

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

NEW YORK, Nov 18 1998 (IPS) - Three gay couples brought a suit before the Vermont Supreme Court Wednesday as the campaign to legalise homosexual marriages gathered steam in the United States.

The case, which will take months to settle, began with one judge, Denise Johnson, pondering the issue of “Why are people being excluded from a marriage license here?

“A man can’t marry a man because he’s a man. A woman can’t marry a woman because she’s a woman,” Johnson went on. “Why isn’t that gender discrimination?”

Beth Robinson, a lawyer for couples – two female and one male – compared the rationale by which Vermont – and all 50 of the United States – forbids homosexual marriage to the statutes which once otlawed interracial marriage exactly 50 years ago. She urged the state Supreme Court to follow the lead of California’s Supreme Court, which in 1948 lifted an interracial marriage ban and prompted other states to follow.

Yet the chances for winning gay marriage in the Vermont case remained mixed at best. In the Nov. 3 elections, voters in both Hawaii and Alaska backed measures to ban gay marriages by two-to- one margins, reversing decisions by courts in both states that would have made them legal.

The Hawaii case was a strong blow to the hopes of gay rights’ groups, since the heavily Democratic state is regarded as more liberal in its social views than any other. Yet the Nov. 3 elections also included some promising signs for gays, including the victory in Wisconsin of Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat who will be the first declared lesbian in the House of Representatives.

Nationwide attention has become more focused on gay rights since the murder last month of Matt Shepard, a gay student killed in Wyoming by two men who some reports suggest reacted violently when he allegedly made flirtatious comments to them.

Since Shepard’s death, gay-rights activists have pushed for “hate crimes” legislation which would apply stiffer penalties to attackers motivated by homophobia. Supporters of such legislation have staged dozens of protests nationwide, including a New York demonstration which drew more than 5,000 people to shut down the centre of Manhattan briefly last month, sparking a police crackdown.

With the failures at the ballot boxes in Hawaii and Alaska, however, gay-rights activists now are pinning their hopes on the legal proceedings in Vermont.

Even there, they may face an uphill fight. In proceedings Wedensday, Vermont Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy suggested throwing out all forms of marriage – whether heterosexual or homosexual – and replacing them with the status of “domestic partnership”.

Yet what the couples involved – Stan Baker and Peter Harrigan, Lois Farnham and Holly Puterbaugh and Stacy Jolles and Nina Beck – want, Robinson said, is to have marriage licenses. All three couples were denied marriage licenses by their respective town clerks. Puterbaugh and Farnham, who have lived together for 26 years, contend that they have just as much right to consider themselves married as any other couple.

Yet Assistant Attorney General Eve Jacobs-Carnahan argued that if the couples want to have their marriages recognised, they should take it up with the state legislature and not with the courts. Having the courts redefine marriage “would eliminate the safe harbour for the legislature about where it can operate, where it can legislate without looking over its shoulder” to the courts, she argued.