SAN FRANCISCO — A ruling today by the California Court of Appeal reversed a lower court’s 2005 decision that would have redefined marriage to include same-sex couples. The decision is another major victory for Alliance Defense Fund attorneys who have been defending marriage in California and across the nation.
“The court today recognized that political special interests shouldn’t trump what’s in the best interest of families and children,” said ADF Senior Counsel Glen Lavy. “Who’s more important: our children or special interest groups? This court rightly put people before politics.”
In today’s decision, the court wrote, “The respondents in these appeals are asking this court to recognize a new right. Courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution as marriage.... Judges are not free to rewrite statutes to say what they would like, or what they believe to be better social policy.”
In March 2005, Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer declared the state’s marriage laws unconstitutional, finding “no rational purpose” to “limit” marriage to the union of one man and one woman. ADF attorneys had filed the lawsuit to protect California voters who, in a significant majority in 2000, passed Proposition 22, the state’s Defense of Marriage Act.
“No matter how many times activists try to redefine it, marriage means one man and one woman. Everything else is counterfeit,” Lavy said.
The full text of today’s ruling in
Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund v. City and County of San Francisco can be read at
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/Prop22opinion.pdf. The victory follows numerous other legal victories for marriage in recent months (
www.telladf.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3805).
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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