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Gay federal judge rules traditional marriage unconstitutional in California

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Here’s the story from Life Site News.

Excerpt:

A federal judge has ruled that California’s constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is unconstitutional, because it excludes same-sex unions.

Chief Judge Vaughn Walker, who presides over the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, declared Proposition 8 had no “rational basis” in a 138-page ruling on the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case released Wednesday afternoon.

[…]The judge dismissed the amendment, saying its restriction of marriage to heterosexual couples was “nothing more than an artifact of a foregone notion that men and women fulfill different roles in civic life.” He also added that it seemed to him proponents of Prop. 8 were defending the amendment on the basis of “moral disapproval,” which he said was “an improper basis on which to deny rights to gay men and lesbians” and enacted in law, “a private moral view that same-sex couples are inferior to opposite-sex couples.”

[…]Walker, however, is himself an active homosexual, and some conservative critics of the Prop. 8 case contended that Walker would be too personally invested in the case to deliver an impartial outcome.

[…]Walker also ruled that domestic partnerships did not satisfy the duty on California to let same-sex couples marry each other.

Michelle Malkin reports that pro-marriage activists are appealing:

In court papers filed Tuesday night, lawyers for the Proposition 8 defense team asked Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker for a stay of his ruling if the outcome is to declare the law unconstitutional. The motion indicates that the Proposition 8 lawyers will immediately ask the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the ruling if Walker rules against them.

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