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Attorneys for same-sex couples who won the right to marry last month have met a deadline imposed by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in a case brought by the state of Utah which is trying to ban more marriages. A federal judge declared Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, and the state has asked the Supreme Court to stay the ruling, placing a hold on marriage equality.
The case, Kitchen v. Herbert, has opened the doors for thousands of Utah same-sex couples to marry.
In their 61-page filing (below), attorneys for the same-sex couples note the state of Utah has not met the minimal burden that would warrant a stay.
The couples cite the Supreme Court’s DOMA case, and other reasons, including:
“Granting a stay would cause undisputed, irreparable harm to same-sex couples and their children,” and, the state of Utah “cannot show irreparable harm based on potential questions regarding the validity of same-sex couples’ marriages.”
Perhaps most interesting, however, is this portion of the filing:
Applicants cannot show that this Court is likely to reverse the District Court’s ruling by citing to a hodgepodge of articles that purportedly show that same-sex parents are inferior to opposite-sex parents. In addition to being false, Applicants’ argument does not resolve the constitutional issues presented by this case. As the District Court carefully demonstrated, and as numerous other federal and state courts across the country have also found, there simply is no rational connection between barring same-sex couples from marriage and the promotion of “responsible procreation†or “optimal parenting†by opposite-sex couples. To the extent the benefits and protections of marriage encourage opposite-sex couples to marry before having children, those incentives existed long before Utah’s discriminatory laws were enacted, and they would continue to exist if those laws were struck down.
And a related footnote offers this satisfying statement:
Utah’s “arguments about optimal childrearing…are not relevant to whether the District Court decision will be upheld on appeal, as the District Court observed. … However, Applicants’ statement that “[a]mong the wealth of social science analysis supporting the traditional definition of marriage, a substantial body of research confirms that children generally fare best when reared by their two biological parents in a loving, low-conflict marriage,†… is not true.” [emphasis ours]
“The scientific consensus of every national health care organization charged with the welfare of children and adolescents – including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association, the American Sociological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Medical Association, and the Child Welfare League of America – based on a significant and well-respected body of current research, is that children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents, with all things being equal, are as well-adjusted as children raised by opposite-sex parents.”
Touché!
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13A687 #3 Plaintiffs’ Opposition to Stay by Equality Case Files
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Hat tip: Equality on Trial
Image of Seth Anderson and Michael Ferguson, one of the first same-sex couples to marry in Utah (not associated with Kitchen v. Herbert) , by Seth Anderson via Twitter