NEWS RELEASE
Wednesday, August 4, 2004

EQUALITY MARYLAND
Contact: Dan Furmansky, Executive Director
Phone:    Office 410-685-6567
Cell    301-461-4900
Email:  dan@equalitymaryland.org

Washington State Trial Court Says Same-Sex Couples
Have a Fundamental Right to Marry

There is No Rational Reason for Denying Marriage Licenses to Same-Sex Couples, Judge Says

Baltimore, Md. –– Equality Maryland, Maryland’s largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, applauded the legal opinion issued today in Washington State which finds that its marriage laws, limited to opposite-sex couples, violate the Washington Constitution. The Honorable William L. Downing of King County Superior Court ruled that current law denies same-sex couples the same privileges and immunities as other residents, and deprives them of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The case will be appealed to the Washington State Supreme Court.

“While this ruling has no direct bearing on Maryland, it certainly brings us hope that Maryland’s judiciary will also realize that no reasoned argument exists for our state to deny fundamental constitutional guarantees to gay and lesbian Marylanders simply because of who we love,” said Executive Director Dan Furmansky. “It is simply not acceptable that some Marylanders don’t have the right to visit their loved ones in the hospital, or that some children in this state, because they have two parents of the same gender, are left without the same security and protections as other children.”

In July, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of nine loving, same-sex couples and a recently widowed man seeking the right to marry in Maryland. That case, Deane and Polyak v. Conaway, asks the Maryland Courts to determine the constitutionality of denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

"Litigation is an appropriate route to take to gain equality in marriage for gays and lesbians, particularly given the biases and prejudices running throughout the legislative body,” Maryland Senator Sharon Grosfeld (D-Montgomery County), who is a family law attorney, said. “Many civil rights issues have been decided by the courts because legislatures were too weak to do the right thing. I have the utmost confidence in Maryland’s highest court to recognize and fix the equal protection problem that currently exists in Maryland law with regard to which persons have the legal right to marry."

From the Decision

“Some declaim that the institutions of marriage and family are weak these days and, in fact, stand threatened. Any trial court judge who regularly hears divorce, child abuse and domestic violence cases deeply shares this concern. It is not difficult, however, to identify both the causes of the present situation and the primary future threat. They come from inside the institution, not outside of it.”

“The legal question is not whether heterosexual marriage is good for the replenishment of the species through procreation. It is. The precise question is whether barring committed same-sex couples from the benefits of the civil marriage laws somehow serves the interest of encouraging procreation. There is no logical way in which it does so.”

“If there is indeed any outside threat to the institution of marriage, it could well lie in legislative tinkering with the creation of alternative species of quasi-marriage.”

-Honorable William L. Downing, King County Superior Court, in Anderson et al. v. King County et al.

Click here to read the full text of the decision.