Gay marriage ban upheld

Adding months, perhaps years, for same-sex couples to receive recognition from the state of Michigan for their marriages, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals last week ruled that Michigan´s ban on same-sex marriages was legal.

The move breaks a series of federal court rulings which have found marriage bans unconstitutional.

The ACLU announced it would immediately seek a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court, and attorney Dana Nessel, who rep resents April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, the plaintiffs in Michigan´s challenge to the marriage ban, said before the ruling came down that she would be going directly to the Supreme Court. The losing sides could ask for a rehearing before the 6th Circuit Appeals Court.

The ruling applies to Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Experts expect the Supreme Court to take the case. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told an audience in Minnesota in September that "there will be some urgency" if a court upheld a marriage ban.

Emily Horvath, an adjunct law professor at Western Michigan University Cooley Law school called the ruling a "cop out."

"The Sixth Circuit has forced the hand of the Supreme Court – ´Now you´ve got to decide,´" she said of the ruling and the fact the court refused to grant a hearing in the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals case earlier this year.

Appeals Court Judges Jeffrey Sutton and Deborah Cook wrote in the majority opinion:

"Not one of the plaintiffs´ theories, however, makes the case for constitutionalizing the definition of marriage and for removing the issue from the place it has been since the founding: in the hands of state voters."

In a blistering dissent, Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey ripped the majority opinion apart, saying, "one is tempted to speculate that the majority has purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split regarding the legality of same-sex marriage that could prompt a grant of certiorari by the Supreme Court and an end to the uncertainty of status and the interstate chaos that the current discrepancy in state laws threatens."

Equality Michigan and others in support of marriage equality have promised residents a ballot initiative to place the repeal of the state´s amendment on the ballot in 2016.

"I don´t trust that a legislature that embraced Gary Glenn would also responsibly put a marriage equality question on the ballot in a fair and balanced way, and not harmful in some way," she said.

Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette appealed the original decision by District Court Judge Bernard Friedman.

“The sooner (the Supreme Court justices) rule, the better, for Michigan and the country,” he said in a statement in which he announced he will not oppose an appeal to the High Court.

Emily Dievendorf, executive director of Equality Michigan, was more strident in her response.

"In March, we saw couples that had been together 30 to 50 years, finally have their marriages recognized and respected by the government," she said. "To us that was an acknowledgement of our humanity. Revoking that recognition is a slap in the face."

Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum was the first clerk in the state to marry a same-sex couple. "One of the brides I married has passed away while waiting for her marriage to recognized by the state," Byrum said. "It´s wrong. It´s sick."