An Inspiring Victory for Fairness and Opportunity
Statement by Jennifer C. Pizer, Lambda Legal Senior Counsel
Published 05/15/08
Today, for the first time, lesbian and gay families in California are fully equal under the law. Their promises of love and commitment for a lifetime can have the same legal protection and dignity as those of other loving couples.
Our Constitution’s values are what bind us together as a people. Those values promise each of us liberty and equality, and allow us to live together in harmony with our amazing diversity and common humanity.
Lesbian and gay people have always been part of this diversity and shared human experience. Today’s inspiring decision simply recognizes our common humanity, and that our Constitution’s protections apply to every family in our great state.
Expansion of equality, fairness and inclusion makes California better, and ultimately makes America better. Today’s decision – an inspiring victory for fairness and opportunity – shows that this is true. Future generations will look back on today’s decision and recognize it as an important, historic step forward, in keeping with our best traditions of fairness and opportunity for all.
I want to emphasize that this step-by-step legal process is central to how our society moves forward in an orderly, well-grounded way, building from one issue, and one legal precedent, to the next, with continuity that connects the past to the future, and binds us all more closely together as a society. The Supreme Court today relied on its own 1948 decision ending racial discrimination in marriage, its many other decisions through the years expanding equality in California law, and the United States Supreme Court’s 2003 decision in our Lawrence v. Texas case striking down the laws against gay and lesbian intimate relationships, among many other important legal precedents. Each of these decisions was a critical building block for our human progress under law, and for today’s historic decision in favor of fairness and opportunity for every family in California.
I could not be prouder of the work done in this litigation by NCLR, the ACLU and Lambda Legal in this case, by our clients, 14 loving same-sex couples, Equality California and Our Family Coalition, as well as San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Chief Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart, and the amazing, inspiring community of LGBT individuals, couples and families that we represent together. It is through this kind of dedicated, collective effort that we help our society live up to its promises of liberty and justice for ALL, and “family values” that value ALL families, equally.
