Witness testimony in the first federal marriage-equality trial came to a close late last month, and attorneys are expected return in about a month to deliver their closing arguments in the landmark case.
U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker heard 12 days of testimony from advocates and opponents of same-sex marriage in the suit that seeks to repeal California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 voter referendum that overturned the state’s marriage-equality law.
Walker asked attorneys for both sides to submit briefs on their cases by Feb. 26 and said he will reconvene court at some point after that to hear closing statements before delivering his ruling.
The plaintiffs, two same-sex couples who tried unsuccessfully to obtain marriage licenses after the passage of Prop. 8, were represented by attorneys David Boies and Theodore Olson, who called 16 witnesses to the stand in their 10 days with the case, including marriage and civil-rights experts, psychologists, the Republican mayor of San Diego and the four individuals who filed the suit.
Boies and Olson were tasked with demonstrating that the passage of Prop. 8 was a violation of the equal-protection and due-process guarantees under the U.S. Constitution. Throughout the plaintiffs’ witness testimony and the cross-examination of the defense’s witnesses, the pair attempted to illustrate that Prop. 8 was propelled by a deep-seated bias against LGBT individuals rather than a compelling governmental interest.
The defendants, however — represented by attorneys for Protect Marriage, which ran the Yes on 8 campaign — sought to show that gays are not a disadvantaged population and are pushing for a special recognition that would cause societal harm.
The defense rested its case Jan. 27 after presenting just two witnesses, Kenneth Miller and David Blankenhorn.
Miller, a political-science professor at Claremont McKenna College, attempted to prove that the LGBT community has extensive political power, citing the more-than $43 million the No On 8 proponents raised to fight the ballot initiative and the vast corporate and governmental support their efforts generated throughout the country.
Under cross-examination, Miller acknowledged that religion did play “a factor” in the passage of Prop. 8, and that the marriage ban does mandate that the state “treat heterosexual couples differently than same-sex couples.”
Blankenhorn, founder and president of conservative thinktank Institute for American Values, took the stand Jan. 26 and defined marriage as “a socially approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman,” the main purpose of which he asserted is procreation. Blankenhorn went on to predict that extending marriage rights to same-sex couples would weaken the overall institution of marriage and eventually lead to the legalization of polygamy.
On cross-examination, however, Blankenhorn was unable to provide any scholarly evidence for his opinions. Boies also confronted Blankenhorn with a quote from his own book, “The Future of Marriage,” in which he wrote that the country would “be more American on the day we permitted same-sex marriage.”
Blankehorn admitted that marriage equality would promote tolerance and acceptance and would also benefit same-sex couples and their children, but said upholding traditional heterosexual marriage should supercede those advantages.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].