BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE INVALID COURT: JUSTICES RULE SAME-SEX COUPLES MUST HAVE EQUAL PROTECTION.

Byline: Tony Castro

Staff Writer

The California Supreme Court's landmark ruling striking down a state ban on same-sex marriage now opens the way to a summer of gay and lesbian weddings in the Golden State and a new political fight leading into the fall's presidential campaign, supporters of the decision said Thursday.

The court's 4-3 decision -- making California the second state in the nation, after Massachusetts, to give same-sex couples the right to marry -- ruled that two state laws limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman are unconstitutional.

But even while celebrating the decision Thursday, gay-rights advocates and supporters said they are bracing for a possible November ballot initiative from a coalition of religious and social conservative groups attempting to enact a ban on same-sex marriages in the state constitution.

"This, of course, is going to deal with the politics of today and with our presidential election, but we're not going away," said the Rev. Troy Perry of Los Angeles, a plaintiff in the first California case to challenge the law, part of a series of lawsuits heard by the state Supreme Court.

Legally, same-sex couples will not be able to marry for at least 30 days, when the Judicial Council of California said the ruling will be final.

The Los Angeles Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office said Thursday that it will not be authorized until then to issue marriage licenses or to perform civil-marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples.

Conservative and religious organizations and leaders roundly criticized the ruling.

Liberty Counsel, which represented the group Campaign for California Families before the court in support of the ban, said it would ask the justices to stay the ruling until after the November election.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said he was disappointed that the court overruled some 61percent of the state's voters who had approved Proposition 22, which banned same-sex marriage in California.

"This is another decision where four members of the judiciary reject the will of the people who overwhelmingly voted in 2000 to ban same-sex marriage," said Antonovich.

But gay-rights advocates said they expect thousands of same-sex couples to begin marrying as soon as the law allows -- and the race to the altar has already begun for some.

Robin Tyler, another of the first plaintiffs in the Los Angeles case, turned to her partner at a news conference Thursday and said: "This is the first time that I have ever asked her, but now I can say, 'Diane Olson, would you marry me?"'

The couple kissed and embraced amid tears of joy, underscoring the emotion that the court's decision drew from same-sex couples, gay-rights activists and their supporters around the state -- especially in Los Angeles and San Francisco, home to the largest gay and lesbian populations in the country.

"The California Supreme Court had the integrity and the courage to do its job and say that all Californians are entitled to equal protection of the law," said Lorri L. Jean, chief executive officer of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center.

"This is not an activist court. This is a moderate court. Republican governors appointed all but one of them. And today that moderate court did exactly what it is supposed to do -- it applied the law fairly."

Tyler and Olson were among the same-sex couples denied marriage licenses at the Beverly Hills Courthouse in 2004. Olson is a granddaughter of former California Gov. Culbert L. Olson, who served from 1939 to 1943.

They had sought to marry in the wake of San Francisco issuing marriage licenses in March 2004 to thousands of same-sex couples, a practice that was stopped by the courts.

The cases on which the court ruled Thursday were also brought by the city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples, Equality California and another gay-rights organization.

California's ban on same-sex marriage was based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by voters in 2000, both defining marriage as limited to unions between a man and a woman.

The Secretary of State's Office is expected to rule by the end of June whether the sponsors of the ballot initiative to ban same-sex marriage have gathered enough signatures to qualify an amendment to the state constitution.

Thursday's decision sparked impromptu celebrations in West Hollywood, the Southland's largest gay community, with people drinking champagne in blocked-off streets.

The ruling also was hailed by many California elected officials, including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has vetoed legislation outlawing same-sex marriages.

The governor said he would not support any legal challenge of the court decision and said he also will not support an amendment to the constitution that would overturn the state Supreme Court ruling.

But Randy Thomasson, president of Campaign for Children and Families, said the same-sex marriage ruling threatens his group's view of traditional family values.

"Children without a father or without a mother on average fare worse than children with a married father and mother, all under the same roof," Thomasson said.

"If the institution of marriage is redefined and therefore destroyed in the law, the well-being of children is threatened, both emotionally, socially, even physically."

Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who represented the first two same-sex couples to challenge the state's marriage laws, said the decision is historic.

"The Supreme Court in its groundbreaking opinion today has concluded that permitting same-gender couples access only to domestic partnership and not marriage improperly infringes on these couples' fundamental constitutional right to marry and violates the equal protection by the law which is guaranteed by the California Constitution," Allred said in a news conference Thursday at her Wilshire Boulevard office.

In issuing its ruling, the California Supreme Court became the first in the nation to apply the constitutional protections reserved for race and gender to sexual orientation.

"One of the core elements embodied in the state constitutional right to marry is the right of an individual and a couple to have their own official family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that accorded the family relationships of other couples," Chief Justice Ronald M. George wrote in a 121-page opinion, joined by Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno.

Justices Marvin Baxter, Ming Chin and Carol Corrigan dissented. Baxter said he wished the court would have deferred on the law to the Legislature.

Baxter wrote: "But a bare majority of this court, not satisfied with the pace of democratic change, now abruptly forestalls that process and substitutes, by judicial fiat, its own social policy views for those expressed by the people themselves."

The court majority, however, said California's current domestic-partnership law that gives gay and lesbian couples nearly all the benefits and burdens of heterosexual marriage is not enough:

"An individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

tony.castro(at)dailynews.com

818-713-3761

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Eric Manriquez, left, and Juan Rivera, both of Los Angeles, will wed next month, as soon as same-sex marriages are permitted.

(2) Michael, left, and John Galluccio of Stevenson Ranch, along with their adopted son, Adam, 12, were happy about the state Supreme Court ruling overturning a ban on same-sex marriages.

John Lazar/Staff Photographer