SAN FRANCISCO -- Four years after San Francisco ignited passionate embraces and heated national debate by briefly allowing gay marriage, California's top court hears arguments on Tuesday as to whether matrimony should be limited to a man and a woman.
The hearing brings into focus the highest-profile U.S. fight over gay rights in recent years and the outcome could end up influencing legislation and litigation in other states.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom forced the issue by suddenly issuing gay marriage licenses in February 2004. More than 4,000 homosexual couples took him up on the offer, including comedian Rosie O'Donnell and her partner, until a lower court halted the process.
Later that year California's Supreme Court ruled that Newsom, mayor of a city long at the forefront of gay rights, had no authority to wed gays and voided the marriages.
The same court just across the street from City Hall where the gay marriages took place now decides the larger question whether California can legally bar same-sex matrimony.
Gay marriage supporters won an initial battle when a Superior Court judge ruled in their favor in 2005. The following year a state appeals court judge overruled that decision and backed existing state law.
Californians in 2000 approved a ballot measure defining marriage as the union of man and woman. But domestic partnership legislation as of 2005 gave registered gay couples many of the same privileges enjoyed by married couples.
Since 2005 California's legislature twice voted to allow gay marriages, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who is liberal on many social issues, vetoed the bills, saying voters or the courts should decide the issue.
UNUSUAL SESSION
It now falls to the seven justices of the California Supreme Court to resolve the matter, and they have 90 days from the hearing to issue an opinion. With six of the judges appointed by Republican governors and one appointed by a Democrat, the panel is considered politically moderate.
The court has made a rare exception to its one-hour total limit on oral arguments and will hold a three-hour session.
"I can't recall any where there were three hours of arguments, I really can't," Cruz Reynoso told Reuters about his years as a California Supreme Court justice from 1982-87.
"Not often, but sometimes, oral arguments actually make a difference in difficult cases and I assume that the court considers this a difficult case."
More than half of U.S. states have passed constitutional amendments barring gay marriage, and President George W. Bush has proposed a U.S. Constitutional amendment.
State supreme courts in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Vermont have ruled against limiting marriage to a man and a woman. Massachusetts responded by becoming the only U.S. state to allow gay marriage, while New Jersey and Vermont instead passed civil union laws similar to those in California.
Several other state supreme courts, including those in New York, Washington and Maryland, found that marriage can be limited to one man, one woman.
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