Gay marriage

[Minimalist]

Looks like Virginia is throwing in the towel as well.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/polit...e/4791715/

Virginia's attorney general won't defend the state's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage when it's challenged in federal court next week.

In a stunning reversal for a Southern state, newly elected Attorney General Mark Herring, a Democrat, said Thursday that the ban is unconstitutional and the state will instead side with two same-sex couples challenging it.

The reversal is but the latest in a rapid string of victories for the gay marriage movement. It follows federal court rulings striking down same-sex marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma. Last June, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in California and struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

Here's an interesting legal discussion of the issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/constitution-check...itics.html

The Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Windsor “requires that when state action discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation, we must examine its actual purpose and carefully consider the resulting inequality to ensure that our most fundamental institutions neither send nor reinforce messages of stigma or second-class status. In short, Windsor requires heightened scrutiny. Our earlier cases applying rational basis review to classifications based on sexual orientation cannot be reconciled with Windsor.”

– Excerpt from a ruling January 21 by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, declaring unconstitutional the exclusion of individuals from serving on a jury because of their sexual orientation.

“The majority [in the Windsor decision] arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.”

– Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in his dissenting opinion last June in the Windsor case striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s ban on federal marital benefits for already married same-sex couples.