A San Francisco County Superior Court judge has held California's ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, saying "no rational purpose exists" to limit marriage to opposite sex partners.
"The state's protracted denial of equal protection cannot be justified simply because such constitutional violation has become traditional," wrote Judge Richard Kramer in his March 14 ruling, which came as the result of lawsuits brought by San Francisco and several same-sex couples a year ago.
Those suits were provoked after the state Supreme Court stopped a four-week same-sex marriage run launched by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in February 2004, when the mayor ordered San Francisco city officials to award marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples and thus defy the state law.
California attorney general Bill Lockyer, who was joined by legal groups representing religious conservatives after the suit was filed, defended the state’s law. They vowed to appeal the Kramer ruling if it went against them, and Lockyer's office said after the ruling the issue was likely to end up back in the state Supreme Court.
But that could be rendered moot if two bills in the state legislature put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the November 2005 ballot and voters approve it, as happened in thirteen other states last year.
