Latest victory for marriage equality: Michigan

A federal judge on Friday overturned a Michigan law that prohibited same-sex marriage. Unless a federal appeals court grants a stay of the judge's ruling, county clerks could begin issuing marriage licenses starting on Monday.

Judge Bernard Friedman of Detroit said the Michigan Marriage Amendment, written into the state constitution by voters in 2004, was invalid because it denied gays and lesbians their rights under the United States Constitution.

Relying on previous rulings by the United States Supreme Court, the judge said federally protected rights cannot be set aside by referendum. "Many Michigan residents have religious convictions whose principles govern the conduct of their daily lives and inform their own viewpoints about marriage," the judge wrote. "Nonetheless, these views cannot strip other citizens of the guarantees of equal protection under the law."

The judge wrote, "In attempting to define this case as a challenge to 'the will of the people,' state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people."

The lead plaintiff in the case was a lesbian who sought joint adoption of her partner's three children. Both are registered nurses and both are state-licensed foster parents. However, the state refused the adoptions because the couple was not married and could not be married by law.

In his 31-page ruling, the judge concluded that the weight of the evidence demonstrated that children of same-sex couples do as well in school as the children of married heterosexual couples. The only evidence the state produced in opposition was from a researcher whose work was "hastily concocted at the behest of a third-party funder," the judge said.

The researcher, Douglas Allen, told the court that he thought homosexuals were eternally damned to hell.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette immediately filed a challenge with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati asking the court to overturn the judge's ruling and block the issuance of same-sex marriages.

By coincidence, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals got a new judge Friday: its first openly lesbian judge. Judith Levy, who was nominated by President Obama, was installed five hours before the federal judge in Michigan handed down his marriage ruling.

The 6th Circuit also will hear marriage equality cases originating in Kentucky and Tennessee. In both of those cases, the judges ruled that states could not limit same-sex marriages.

Since last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act, federal judges in eight states have invalidated prohibitions against saw-sex marriages. Seventeen other states previously allowed same-sex marriages.