Not Louisiana, not yet.
There had to be a first, and it's Louisiana. Eventually, some federal judge was going to be the first, since the Supreme Court's
Windsor ruling against the Defense of Marriage Act, to rule against marriage equality. Judge after judge after judge has ruled for equality, from Virginia to Utah, but in Louisiana, U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman has
accepted the anti-equality argument that has failed elsewhere:
This Court is persuaded that Louisiana has a legitimate interest…whether obsolete in the opinion of some, or not, in the opinion of others…in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents, as specifically underscored by Justice Kennedy in Windsor.
Feldman does not seem to have addressed the question of opposite-sex married couples who are infertile or choose not to have children. His other major argument was that the people have spoken and it's anti-democratic for the courts to impose equality if the people don't want it (dismissing all the other times in history courts have done so on, for instance, racial issues as Very Different And Not The Same At All), but did readers the favor of making plain that his real opposition to marriage equality is in the service of bigotry, not democracy:
For example, must the states permit or recognize a marriage between an aunt and niece? Aunt and nephew? Brother/brother? Father and child? May minors marry? Must marriage be limited to only two people? What about a transgender spouse? Is such a union same-gender or male-female? All such unions would undeniably be equally committed to love and caring for one another, just like the plaintiffs.
I guess we know right where this judge is coming from, and he clearly feels proud of himself for doing such an unfashionable thing as going against "the volley of nationally orchestrated rulings against states whose voters chose in free in open elections, whose legislatures [...] listened to their citizens regarding the harshly divisive and passionate issue on same-sex marriage." But that's the sort of thing you have to keep telling yourself when you stand on the wrong side of history.
