Sun Sentinel Editorial Board: Time Has Come To Allow Gay Marriage

Time Has Come To Allow Gay Marriage
South Florida Sun-Sentinel Editorial Board
May 20, 2008

ISSUE: California marriage ruling reverberates in Florida.

The California Supreme Court got it correct, and the impact of that decision is reverberating across the country to Florida.

With last week's gutsy 4-3 ruling allowing same-sex couples to marry, there are now exactly two states in the country — Massachusetts is the other — that have legalized gay marriage. You can count on others following, as people start to realize this is a matter of equal rights that needs to be addressed.

Florida has a law banning same-sex marriage that is similar to the California law the court rejected. It now seems inevitable the Florida law will be challenged in the courts.

While many oppose same-sex marriage on concerns that it would undermine the traditional family structure, it is difficult to find concrete reasons to deny gay and lesbian couples basic rights that heterosexual couples have. The nation has changed in recent decades — interracial marriage was banned in certain states little more than half a century ago — and the time is right for a national discussion on allowing all committed, loving couples the legal right to marry or unite in some legally equivalent civil union, no matter their sexual orientation.

The California ruling has heated up the already boiling rhetoric concerning Amendment 2 on the Florida ballot in November, which would constitutionally ban same-sex marriage. Florida4Marriage, leading the charge for Amendment 2, predictably used the California ruling to raise the fear quotient, stating ". . . the threats of homosexual activist judges is a real one."

Fact is, same-sex marriages or unions should be a matter of equal rights and equal protection, rather than becoming an issue of what could happen to the family structure. Or fear.

That's not what this ruling is about. The traditional sanctioning, and elevation, of marriage comes in houses of worship, not the county marriage license office.

What's at stake, instead, is the legal recognition of unions by people. It's time that Florida governments offer legal protection and recognition to those same-sex couples who apply.

BOTTOM LINE: Time is right to extend equal rights to all.