By Gudrun Schultz
LOS ANGELES, October 6, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The California Court of Appeal reversed a lower court ruling from 2005 yesterday that would have redefined the state’s legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples, in what has been called a victory for marriage advocates across the country.
A 2005 ruling by Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer said the state’s marriage laws were unconstitutional. The decision found “no rational purpose” to “limit” marriage to the union of one man and one woman.
The pro-family Alliance Defense Fund, a coalition of lawyers working to protect religious freedom in the US, filed suit in the interests of California voters, who in 2000 passed the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, Proposition 22, with a significant majority.
“The court today recognized that political special interests shouldn’t trump what’s in the best interest of families and children,” ADF senior counsel Glen Lavy said, in a press release yesterday.
“Who’s more important: our children or special interest groups? This court rightly put people before politics.”
Yesterday’s appeals court ruling said the decision by the Superior Court to overturn the state’s marriage laws overstepped the bounds of judicial authority.
“The respondents in these appeals are asking this court to recognize a new right,” the court wrote in yesterday’s decision. “Courts simply do not have the authority to create new rights, especially when doing so involves changing the definition of so fundamental an institution as marriage…Judges are not free to rewrite statutes to say what they would like, or what they believe to be better social policy.”
“We believe this power [to define marriage] rests in the people and their elected representatives, and courts may not appropriate to themselves the power to change the definition of such a basic social institution.”
ADF attorneys claimed the ruling as a victory in the battle for preserving traditional marriage.
“No matter how many times activists try to redefine it, marriage means one man and one woman. Everything else is counterfeit.” Lavy said.
Read full text of today’s ruling:
www.telladf.org/UserDocs/Prop22opinion.pdf
Read ADF press release:
https://www.alliancedefensefund.org/news/story.aspx?cid=3877
See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:
Activist Judge Trumps Wishes of People in California Gay “Marriage” Ruling
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/mar/05031506.html