The legal battle over same-sex marriage in California is also a clash of religions.As the state Supreme Court prepares for a three-hour hearing March 4 on the constitutionality of a state law allowing only opposite-sex couples to marry, the justices have been flooded with written arguments from advocates on both sides -- including two large contingents of religious organizations with sharply differing views.On one side are the Mormon church, the California Catholic Conference, the National Association of Evangelicals and the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations. They describe marriage between a man and a woman as "the lifeblood of community, society and the state" and say any attempt by the courts to change that would create "deep tensions between civil and religious understandings of that institution."On the other side are the Unitarians, the United Church of Christ, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Soka Gakkai branch of Buddhism, and dissident groups of Mormons, Catholics and Muslims. Saying their faiths and a wide range of historical traditions honor same-sex unions, they argue that the current law puts the state's stamp of approval on "the religious orthodoxy of some sects concerning who may marry."Those groups won't be represented at next month's oral arguments, when the court will hear from the parties in the case: same-sex couples and the city of San Francisco, challenging the marriage law, and the attorney general's and governor's offices, defending the law. Also participating will be lawyers seeking to intervene on behalf of two organizations opposing gay rights.The religious groups' written arguments, known as friend-of-the-court briefs, play the less-visible but important role of advising the justices how their ruling could affect society. Courts at all levels sometimes cite those arguments to buttress their legal reasoning.Fifty such briefs have been filed in this case, representing hundreds of organizations and individuals -- professional associations of psychologists and anthropologists, city and county governments, law professors, businesses, civil rights organizations, one former state Supreme Court justice, and advocates of "alternatives to homosexuality."The religious coalitions have enlisted legal heavyweights: for opponents of same-sex marriage, Kenneth Starr, the former U.S. solicitor general, federal judge and impeachment prosecutor of former President Bill Clinton; and for their adversaries, Raoul Kennedy, a prominent San Francisco attorney.Starr said the denominations he represents have gained their knowledge about marriage in "millions of hours of counseling and ministry.""We have seen at close range the enormous benefits that traditional male-female marriage imparts," he wrote. "We have also witnessed the substantial adverse consequences for children that often flow from alternative household arrangements."The "inescapable truth," Starr said, is that "children need their mothers and fathers, and that society needs mothers and fathers to raise their children."His clients' argument is not based on their religious beliefs, he said, but on "historical and sociological facts about what marriage has always been across time and cultures," and on the doctrine that courts must let the people and their representatives decide such fundamental questions.He added a note of warning: Religious organizations support civil marriage only because they agree with the way the law defines it."Creation of a genderless definition would fracture the centuries-old consensus about the meaning of marriage," Starr said, turning "a point of social unity" into "a point of social conflict."Kennedy singled out that passage in his brief for denominations supporting same-sex marriage."Starr less than subtly threatens retribution if the court steps in to keep civil marriage neutral with respect to religion," he said.Like Starr, Kennedy cited academic studies -- though different ones -- to support his historical position: that the tradition of marriage is nowhere near as uniform as the conservative denominations portray it.He said same-sex marriages were recognized by the Christian church in the fifth century, were observed among natives by the first Spanish explorers in the Americas, were common among the Mojave Indians of the Colorado River in southeastern California, and have been documented in more than 230 African tribes.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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