Sad news today from California — their state Supreme Court has decided that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority, and declared nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages null and void.
The California Supreme Court on Thursday voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco this year and ruled unanimously that the mayor overstepped his authority by issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.
The court said the city illegally issued the certificates and performed the ceremonies, since state law defined marriage as a union between a man and woman.
The justices separately decided with a 5-2 vote to nullify the 3,995 marriages performed between February 12 and March 11, when the court halted the weddings. Their legality, Justice Joyce Kennard wrote, must wait until courts resolve the constitutionality of state laws that restrict marriages to opposite-sex couples.
There’s still hope that the California state constitution might be challenged and amended to remove the restrictive language and allow same-sex marriages again in the future, but that will probably be another long (and potentially fairly nasty) battle. We’ll just have to wait and see where it goes from here.
(via The Blogging of the President)
iTunes: “Trainspotting” by Primal Scream from the album Trainspotting (1996, 10:34).