California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's office sang and danced to an appeals court yesterday. It tried the governor's tactic of claiming that same-sex marriage was not necessary, homosexual couples sorta, kinda had equal rights with domestic partnerships.
Senior Assistant AG Louis Mauro had the degrading task of pretending that separate and not equal was plenty fine for the golden state. The arguments included the low-brow call for "common sense." "The common understanding of marriage is deeply rooted in our society, and it is legitimate for California to maintain this meaning while affording equivalent rights and benefits to same-sex couples."
Mauro disputed the lower court decision similar to Massachusetts' Superior Court's that nothing prohibited same-sex marriages under law. According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, he "disputed (Judge Richard) Kramer's conclusion that gays and lesbians had a fundamental right to marry their chosen partners, saying fundamental rights were limited to those that were 'deeply rooted in history, culture and tradition.'"
Lawyers for the same sex couples who won the initial ruling and for San Francisco pointed out that "(t)heir argument would legitimize the doctrine of separate but equal in the state of California."
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