ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Attorneys with the Alliance Defense Fund filed a friend-of-the-court brief Tuesday on behalf of the Family Research Council in the Maryland Court of Appeals affirming marriage as the union of one man and one woman.
“Marriage has become an extremely emotional issue because political special interests are trying to reduce it to nothing more than a benefits system for loving couples,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Chris Stovall. “What we’re really discussing here is whether we’re going to let special interest groups or the law define marriage.”
The ACLU filed a complaint on behalf of several same-sex couples who demanded to be “married.” In January 2006, a state circuit court ruled that denying marriage to the couples was “sex discrimination” and in violation of the state’s Equal Rights Amendment. Only one state supreme court (Hawaii) has ever suggested that the true definition of marriage might be sex discrimination. That decision was overturned by a constitutional amendment passed by the state’s voters in 1996.
The case in Maryland has now been appealed to that state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.
“Only by radically redefining the institution of marriage could the trial court have concluded that the state of Maryland engaged in sex discrimination by defining marriage as it has always been defined,” Stovall explained. “Since the trial court ordered the redefinition of marriage in January of this year, two state supreme courts and a federal appeals court have held it is constitutional for the state to protect the definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. We’re confident that the Maryland high court will agree.”
ADF-allied attorney Steven Tiedemann of Columbia filed the friend-of-the-court brief, a copy of which is available at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/ConawayAmicus.pdf.
For more information on the battle to protect marriage, visit
www.domawatch.org.
ADF is a legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation.
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