Baltimore Sun: Same-Sex Marriage Case Goes to Court of Appeals Click HERE to Bring Up Full Post

From the Baltimore Sun, December 3, 2006:

More than two years after nine gay and lesbian couples challenged local clerks of courts to issue them marriage licenses, Maryland's battle over same-sex marriages moves to the state's highest court tomorrow -- an emotion-charged case whose consequences seem sure to reverberate across the legislature and the electoral landscape.

...


"It's the beginning of the wait," said Dan Furmansky, executive director of the gay-rights group Equality Maryland. "If you look at this in the context of civil rights struggles, if you just won and won, it wouldn't be a struggle."

"It's not going to go away," said Rick Bowers, whose Defend Maryland Marriage group unsuccessfully pushed this year for a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. "It will not go away in the short term because I don't think either side will be satisfied."

...

Del. Donald H. Dwyer Jr. said he plans to push a bill next year to ban gay marriage in the state constitution, a measure he has backed unsuccessfully in three legislative sessions.

"I will be working for the next four years to be sure we can get that on the ballot the next election cycle," the Anne Arundel County Republican said. "If same-sex marriage is legalized in this state, it will very shortly be taught in public schools as normal sexual behavior, and I am totally opposed to having children taught that homosexuality is normal."

...

Many other groups have filed briefs supporting the plaintiffs, including the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and 68 professors from the University of Maryland and University of Baltimore law schools. "There is no rational reason to exclude same-sex couples from the institution of marriage," said Jana Singer, a University of Maryland law professor, who added that in her 21 years at the university, no other case has drawn as many professors to sign friend-of-the-court briefs. "None of the purposes the state offers will be undermined by allowing same-sex as well as opposite-sex couples to marry."

I do not respect Equality Maryland on this issue, for reasons I have stated elsewhere in this blog, so what Mr. Furmansky sayeth moveth me not.

I predict that the Maryland Court of Appeals - endowed with both a surprising streak of institutional and jurisprudential conservatism for a liberal state but with a Chief Judge who was once arrested for civil rights activity - will go the way of New Jersey, i.e. requiring equal substantive treatment but directing the legislature to craft the statutory tool for equality. I predict further that the decision will go 5-2 in favor of the same-sex plaintiffs and that there will be both a bitter dissent and a concurring opinion in favor of immediate total formal and substantive equality. I believe I know who will write that concurrence, but will not publish that particular prediction here.

Crablaw reader Professor Dan Friedman was an author of the amicus brief noted above and his comments would be most welcome at any time, as would the comments of advocates for the position of the Attorney General or the amicus briefs filed against same-sex marriage in this State (and those of all readers, of course).

Crablaw unapologetically supports the legal and political advocacy for same-sex marriage generally under equal protection grounds (both those of the U.S. Constitution and of Maryland's state-specific Equal Rights Amendment), but recognizes the serious moral, religious and jurisprudential issues which lead many to take the opposite view.

You may follow the oral arguments live here tomorrow, December 4, but I would suggest showing mercy on the Court's new technology and playing the rebroadcast from recording later unless you have a professional or personal stake in the case.