Lawsuits over gay marriage have escalated on the nation's two coasts, energizing advocates on both sides and bringing the legal battle over same-sex marriage closer to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Final arguments in a constitutional test of California's ban on such unions were held a month ago this week. A verdict in the case heard by U.S. District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker in San Francisco could come any day.
Last Thursday, a federal judge in Boston raised the stakes in this fractious area when he declared part of a U.S. law that refuses to recognize state gay marriages is unconstitutional. The law denies gay and lesbian couples federal benefits that go to heterosexual couples.
"To ... divide a class of married individuals into those with spouses of the same sex and those with spouses of the opposite sex is to create a distinction without meaning," Judge Joseph Tauro wrote in the case involving gay couples in Massachusetts, one of five states that issue marriage licenses to gays.
Unlike state legal battles in recent decades that have left a patchwork of state laws on same-sex marriage and civil unions, the cases in San Francisco and Boston test the U.S. Constitution and could lead to a national standard.
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Source: Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY
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