Gay Couple Unhappy with Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Decision - East Idaho News
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Gay Couple Unhappy with Supreme Court’s Same-Sex Marriage Decision

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getty 100714 scotusgayrights?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1412697539964iStock/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) — While the Supreme Court paved the way Monday for several more states to allow gay marriage, some gay couples wish the court had acted differently.

“I think there is still a lot of hardship out there,” L. Havard Scott III, a lawyer in Shreveport, Louisiana, says.

He had hoped the Supreme Court might step in, agree to hear a challenge to a state ban on gay marriage and rule on the issue once and for all by June. Scott wants his marriage to Sergio March Prieto that was performed in Vermont in 2010 recognized in Louisiana.

But the Supreme Court sent a strong signal Monday when it declined to hear several cases that it wants the issue to play out in the states for now. That could take some time in conservative states like Louisiana.

“Every day the uncertainty goes on, the more hardship and pain will be felt,” Scott says. “I think enough lower courts have made it clear that marriage is a fundamental right, and I think the Supreme Court needs to come out and say so. I think they need to sooner rather than later.”

Scott is quick to add that he is happy for those couples who were able to marry because of the court’s decision to deny review of cases in five states: Indiana, Virginia, Utah, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

“This battle has been going on for a long time, a partial victory is still always welcome and I feel very happy for the couples that this will have immediate impact on,” he says.

But he lives in a conservative part of Louisiana. “We are up in the northwestern corner, so it’s the ‘Bible belt,’” he says.

Scott and March Prieto are plaintiffs in a case challenging Louisiana’s ban on gay marriage. In late September, a federal judge upheld the state ban on gay marriage.

“Louisiana’s laws and constitution are directly related to achieving marriage’s historically preeminent purpose of linking children to their biological parents,” Judge Martin Feldman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana wrote in his 32-page opinion.

“The court is persuaded,” Feldman, a Reagan appointee, said, “that a meaning of what is marriage that has endured in history for thousands of years, and prevails in a majority of states today, is not universally irrational on the constitutional grid.”

James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project, says “there are people all across the country who literally cannot wait for this to play out slowly in the courts.”

Esseks points to spouses dealing with terminal cancer and trying to get on employer’s health care plans. Others are seniors living in states like Florida who are trying to survive on Social Security benefits that would be larger if they could get access to the higher benefits their deceased spouse earned.

“Others have been married for decades,” Esseks said. “They aren’t sure how much time they have left, and just want to get married before it’s too late.”

For Scott and March Prieto, it comes down to being treated as a sub-class.

“At the end of the day,” March Prieto says, “we hope the dignity of our marriage is recognized.”


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