Eight gay and lesbian couples, unhappy with civil unions, are suing over the state's refusal to grant them marriage licenses. They want the court to rule that the state's marriage law is unconstitutional because it applies only to heterosexual couples and denies gay couples the financial, social and emotional benefits of marriage.
The state argues that Connecticut's 2005 civil unions law gives the couples the equality they seek under state law.
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The Connecticut couples who sued have been together between 10 and 32 years and say civil unions are inferior to marriage and violate their rights to equal protection and due process.
On Monday the state Supreme Court questioned the plaintiffs' lawyer:
"How can it reasonably be done or logically be done to sort of delink the long-standing, deeply held institutional aspect of marriage, that it's a union between a man and a woman, and then define marriage as something other than that for purposes of this argument?" asked Justice Richard Palmer.
"How can it reasonably be done or logically be done to sort of delink the long-standing, deeply held institutional aspect of marriage, that it's a contract between a man and a father where the father's daughter is sold to the man, and then define marriage as something other than that for purposes of giving women marital rights?"
Or you could go the route that Bennett Klein, the attorney, went:
Klein replied that the fundamental principles of marriage are not based on gender.
Absolutely right. The whole hubbub to define marriage as "one man, one woman" completely overlooks the fact that marriage is first and foremost a union. Why the sex of the people involved matters has never been adequately explained to me. Any attempts to do so seem to boil down to two arguments: (1) only a man and a woman can have children or (2) people of the same sex simply don't fit together for... whatever reason.
(1) simply isn't true; same-sex couples can and do have children (and besides which, children aren't a necessity of marriage). In fact, six of the eight couples involved in the case are raising children themselves. And (2) is non-sensical. All these couples suing for their rights have been together in excess of ten years, but they're not compatible? Of course, often when they say that two men or two women don't fit together they argue that their claim is backed up "by nature", by which they generally mean--again--that it takes a man and a woman to have a baby.
If sex matters, then what distinguishes the wife from the husband? Does one have a specific set of responsibilities and duties that the other doesn't? Is the wife supposed to cook, stay at home and raise the children, while the husband goes to work, controls the money, and allows his wife a pittance of an allowance to buy herself something nice every week? 'Cause, silly child that I am, I thought marriage was a relationship between two equals.
"Our basic argument is, the trial court correctly recognized that there is a rational basis for the state to use a different name for the same rights and benefits accorded same-sex couples," [Attorney General Richard] Blumenthal said. "The rights and benefits are identical, whether the union is called a civil union or a marriage."
The trial court's opinion can be found in a PDF here.
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