The Salt Lake Tribune has posted a scathing editorial about how the state of Utah is handling the marriage equality issue in the aftermath of a district court ruling that Utah's marriage ban is unconstitutional (last December). The editorial indicates that state officials are increasingly hostile to same-sex couples that were married after the ruling and before the stay was issued as well as to their families with regard to adoption issues.
Part of the editorial is below.
In rapid succession, the official Utah position on same-sex marriage has gone from mainstream conservative to merely retrograde to downright nasty.
In fairness, it is not only, or even primarily, Utah’s laws and policies that have changed. It is the rest of the world that has moved, with a speed seldom seen in such matters, away from a one-size-fits-all view of marriage to a live-and-let-live acceptance of what’s now called marriage equality.
It is disappointing that the state’s lawmakers and law enforcers have not yet caught up. But they will have to.
The arguments put forth Thursday by Utah’s hired legal eagles in the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals will soon be brushed aside, if not by that tribunal, then by the U.S. Supreme Court, and by the march of human progress.
A panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held a hearing last Thursday regarding the marriage equality ruling which was appealed. Most legal eagle analysis that I have read indicates that most experts believe that the panel will affirm the decision below in a split decision (2-1).
Meanwhile, the state is engaged in a rear-guard action against families it does not like. It is trying to block the adoption petitions filed by at least two of the some 1,200 same-sex couples who were legally wed after Judge Robert J. Shelby ruled in December that Utah’s Amendment 3, banning same-sex marriage in the state, was unconstitutional.
The fact that the state is going out of its way to stop the legal formation of two — or more — secure, intact and loving families clearly puts the lie to the argument that the official defense of Amendment 3 is not, in lawyer-speak, "animus" against same-sex couples and their households, but a reasonable state effort to encourage the legal formation of, well, secure, intact and loving families.
In listening to the oral arguments, the state officials stated that animus was not present in enacting the marriage amendment, and that Judge Shelby had not found that animus was present in his decision below. The opinion was excellent (IMO), however I disagree with the judge on this one issue.
The core of the many district court rulings allowing same-sex marriage is Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion holding, in the case that struck down the federal Defense of Marriage act, that DOMA was an impermissible denigration of the many children who live in such households.
I don't think that the comments that Justice Kennedy made regarding children in households headed by same-sex couples can be overstated. Folks might be able to (erroneously) rationalize discriminating against certain adults. However, not many can do so with regard to their children. It takes one completely lost in his/her far rightwing ideology (delusions?) to do such a thing.
The same Tenth Circuit panel will hear oral arguments in the Oklahoma marriage equality case on Thursday. After that, I suspect a ruling will be handed down fairly quickly. Most experts are saying that the ruling will come down in two to six months. My guess is that it will be closer to two months.