Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that homosexual couples have the right to marry, making the state the third behind Massachusetts and California to legalize gay unions through the courts. The ruling comes just weeks before Californians go to the polls on a historic gay marriage ballot question.
The court ruled 4-3 that gay and lesbian couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry under the state constitution. It was a logical next step for a state that was the first to voluntarily pass laws affirming and protecting civil unions.
“Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice,” Justice Richard N. Palmer wrote in the majority opinion that overturned a lower court finding. “To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others,” Palmer wrote.
The Family Institute of Connecticut, a political action group that opposes gay “marriage,” called the ruling outrageous.
“Even the legislature, as liberal as ours, decided that marriage is between a man and a woman,” said executive director Peter Wolfgang. “This is about our right to govern ourselves. It is bigger than gay marriage.”
Even though judicial systems have no right to “make” laws but rather are supposed to interpret them, the bigger issue here is the fact that marriage is an institution established by God between one man and one woman. As people continue to move towards redefining what marriage is, we get further and further away from God and Biblical values. And that my friend is a dangerous place to be.
