At last! More than a decade after the Massachusetts high court made judicial history by invalidating a state prohibition on same-sex marriage, a court has finally acknowledged the legal significance of a virtually indisputable characteristic of such prohibitions: their deep-seated religious roots.
U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman in DeBoer v. Snyder on March 21 struck down a Michigan same-sex marriage ban adopted by popular vote in 2004. According to Friedman, the many Michigan residents who voted for the ban failed to recognize the federal constitutional difference between living their lives according to their individual religious beliefs and imposing those beliefs by law on the lives of others.
