Seattle judge rules in favor of same-sex marriage in Washington state

With BC-WA—Same-Sex Marriage-Quotes

SEATTLE (AP) — A judge has ruled that a Washington law banning same-sex marriage violates the state constitution, although no licenses will be issued to gay couples pending a state Supreme Court review.

”The denial to the plaintiffs of the right to marry constitutes a denial of substantive due process,” King County Superior Court Judge William L. Downing ruled Wednesday.

The state Supreme Court, now in recess, could hear the case later this year, said attorney Jennifer Pizer, co-counsel in the case for Lambda Legal Defense, which represented the plaintiff couples and is arguing similar cases in New Jersey, New York and California.

”The judge measured the state's marriage law against the constitution … and the law failed,” said Lisa Stone, executive director of the Northwest Women's Law Center, which joined Lambda in challenging the law.

”We, all of us, are absolutely overjoyed today,” said plaintiff Johanna Bender, who appeared at a news conference with her partner, Sherri Kokx. ”We're fully confident that the Supreme Court will uphold this decision.”

Critics of same-sex marriage were ”disappointed, of course,” said state Sen. Val Stevens, R-Arlington, who intervened in the case.

”I'm disappointed that we even have to be deliberating a well-precedented matter that people previously defined as a marriage between a man and a woman,” Stevens said. ” … What's to say we can't call a sister-brother union marriage? Where do you draw the line?”

”What's best for kids is being neglected to fulfill the wants of a small minority of adults,” said Jeff Kemp, executive director of Bellevue-based Families Northwest.

Downing rejected arguments that a ban on same-sex marriage would protect children from harm.

”Although many may hold strong opinions on the subject, the fact is that there are no scientifically valid studies tending to establish a negative impact on the adjustment of children raised by an intact same-sex couple as compared with those raised by an intact opposite-sex couple,” he wrote.

The gay couples challenged Washington's 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, which restricts marriage to one man and one woman.

Six couples sued in March after King County refused to grant them marriage licenses. Two other couples later signed on to the case. A second lawsuit was filed in April by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of 11 same-sex couples.

The judge's ruling concluded: ”The exclusion of same-sex partners from civil marriage … is not rationally related to any legitimate or compelling state interest and is certainly not narrowly tailored toward such an interest.”

”Ending discrimination is never easy, and this fight isn't over. But the court made the right decision today,” said Rep. Ed Murray, D-Seattle, one of four openly gay men in the state Legislature.

King County Executive Ron Sims, a defendant in the lawsuit, said the ruling was a powerful affirmation of equal rights.

”I always believed that if the court of law addressed this that the court would conclude that the prohibition against gays and lesbians being married would be found unconstitutional,” Sims told The Associated Press.

Sims said he refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because the licenses wouldn't have any legal meaning in a state that didn't recognize them. He said he's glad the couples sued.

Washington is one of 38 states with laws defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Massachusetts has allowed gay marriage since May after a ruling by its highest court.

Pizer declined to speculate on the King County case's prospects before the state Supreme Court, but noted the justices had sided with gay couples in two earlier cases that involved ”the legal status and vulnerability of gay and lesbian couples because of the denial of the opportunity to marry.”

In one case, the court said a gay man whose partner had died without a will had the same rights as a wife seeking distribution of property that she and her husband acquired together. In the other, the court rejected a challenge of domestic-partner benefits for gay and lesbian workers in Vancouver, Wash.