A landmark federal trial on whether to overturn a California ban on gay marriage ended on Wednesday. The case is now in the hands of District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker who is being asked to decide whether California voters violated the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of due process and equal protection when they passed Proposition 8, a referendum in November 2008 to amend the state constitution, defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
Arguing for the ban to be reversed was conservative jurist Ted Olson, who served as U.S. solicitor general under former President George W. Bush. He partnered with David Boies, his adversary in the 2000 Supreme Court decision that put Bush in the White House. Throughout the case, Olson and Boies argued that the ban discriminated against one segment of the population by denying them the fundamental right to marry and that same sex marriage was no threat to heterosexuals.
"Proposition 8 discriminates on the basis of sex the same as Virginia law discriminated on the basis of race," Olson who represented two same-sex couples who want to marry said in the Washington Post. He invoked groundbreaking Supreme Court civil rights decisions, such as Brown v. Board of Education, which forbade racial segregation in public schools, and Loving v. Virginia, which threw out that state's law against interracial marriage.
Leading the defense, Charles Cooper argued that t is reasonable to fear that allowing same-sex marriage would undermine heterosexual marriage and self-evident that the purpose of marriage was procreating and raising children. He further insisted that he did not need to provide evidence to prove the purpose of marriage.
"You don't have to have evidence" to prove that the purpose of marriage is to bear and raise children, he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Months earlier, he had surprised the court by saying he did not know how gay marriage would hurt heterosexuals -- and that he did not need to know in order to win the case.
Olson's response to Cooper: "At the end of the day, 'I don't know' and 'I don't have to present any evidence,' with all respect to Mr. Cooper, doesn't cut it."
Judge Walker is expected to rule in a few weeks.
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