Conn. ruling allows same-sex marriage
Activists rejoice following sharply divided opinion
HARTFORD - Connecticut yesterday became the third state to allow same-sex couples to marry after its sharply divided Supreme Court ruled that a state law allowing gay couples to enter in civil unions denied those couples their constitutional right to equal protection.
The 4-3 ruling elated gay rights activists, who had long contended that denying gay couples the right to marry condemned them to second-class citizenship. Immediately after the ruling was made public at 11:30 a.m. yesterday, gay couples joyously celebrated on the steps of the state capitol into the afternoon and threw a party at the Hartford Hilton last night. They will be allowed to legally marry after Nov. 7, when the ruling takes effect.
"The Supreme Court recognizes that our 33 years of loving each other deserves to be called a marriage," said Janet Peck, holding the hand of her partner, Carol Conklin, at a press conference at the Hilton. Her voice breaking with emotion, Peck said: "For 33 years my heart has ached for that moment . . . The love we felt for all these years will finally be fulfilled."
Elizabeth Kerrigan, who was with her partner, Joanne Mock, and the 6-year-old twins they adopted from Guatemala, Carlos and Fernando, said she had been crying since she heard about the ruling yesterday morning.
"Words can't express the sense of joy and gratitude we feel," Kerrigan said. "It was one of those moments, like when we brought our children home for the first time."
Connecticut follows Massachusetts, which was, by court order, the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, in May 2004, and California, which became the second by court order, in May.
Though there was intense anticipation of yesterday's ruling in Connecticut, it is not drawing the kind of nationwide political attention that the Massachusetts ruling did four years ago. It is being overshadowed by next month's ballot battle over a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in California, which is considered far more influential than Connecticut because of its size and political prominence.
"I don't want to hurt Connecticut's feelings," said Richard Land, a prominent opponent of same-sex marriage who is president of the Southern Baptist Convention's public policy wing. "But all eyes are on California."
Still, local opponents of same-sex marriage blasted the ruling, saying their only chance to stop it would be to push for passage of a ballot question next month that asks voters if they want the state to convene the first constitutional convention in 40 years, potentially launching a years-long process of weighing a ban on same-sex marriage and sending it to voters for ratification.
"The decision is an outrage," said Peter J. Wolfgang, executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, which opposes same-sex marriage. "It is essentially a handful of judges acting as if they were rogue masters usurping the democratic process in Connecticut and radically redefining marriage by judicial fiat."
Leaders of the Connecticut Catholic Conference, which represents the state's Catholic bishops, issued a statement saying they were "extremely disappointed" by the ruling, which they called, "a terribly regrettable exercise in judicial activism."
"The real battle in this court case was not about rights, since civil unions provide a vast number of legal rights to same-sex couples, but about conferring and enforcing social acceptance of a particular lifestyle, a lifestyle many people of faith and advocates of the natural law refuse to accept," the statement said.
There appeared, however, to be little appetite in the capitol to oppose the ruling. Governor M. Jodi Rell, an opponent of same-sex marriage, said she would abide by the decision even though she disagrees with it.
"The Supreme Court has spoken," Rell said. "I do not believe their voice reflects the majority of the people of Connecticut. However, I am also firmly convinced that attempts to reverse this decision - either legislatively or by amending the state Constitution - will not meet with success."
State Senator Andrew J. McDonald, the cochairman of the Assembly's Judiciary Committee who supports same-sex marriage, said the Assembly would seek to update state marriage laws when members reconvene in January, without much opposition anticipated.
"I continue to expect a bipartisan effort to eradicate any remaining vestiges of discrimination," McDonald said, hailing the ruling as a "dramatic reaffirmation of Connecticut's commitment to civil rights and equality for all of her citizens."
Connecticut's lawsuit began in 2004, after eight same-sex couples sought marriage licenses in the town of Madison and were rejected. A year later, Rell, a Republican, signed a measure legalizing civil unions, saying they provided the same rights and benefits as marriage. To placate opponents of same-sex marriage, the law included a provision that defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
In May 2007, gay rights activists argued before the Supreme Court that civil unions were a separate and inherently unequal institution for gays and lesbians. One plaintiff, Jeffrey Busch, compared civil unions to a "learner's permit instead of a driver's license." Supporters of the law argued that the debate was not about rights but about whether the word marriage could be used to describe those rights.
In his majority opinion yesterday, Justice Richard N. Palmer sided with gay rights activists.
He wrote that the "segregation of heterosexual and homosexual couples into separate institutions constitutes a cognizable harm," in light of "the history of pernicious discrimination faced by gay men and lesbians and because the institution of marriage carries with it a status and significance that the newly created classification of civil unions does not embody."
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Peter T. Zarella wrote that "there is no fundamental right to same sex marriage."
"The ancient definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman has its basis in biology, not bigotry," Zarella wrote. "If the state no longer has an interest in the regulation of procreation, then that is a decision for the Legislature or the people of the state and not this court." 