Current Affairs

US: Anti-gay group asks Supreme Court to suspend Oregon marriage ruling

May 28 2014
Written by Joseph McCormick

A group strongly opposed to same-sex marriage has asked the Supreme Court to suspend a ruling in the state of Oregon which allowed gay and lesbian couples to wed.

Same-sex weddings began last Monday in Oregon, after Judge Michael McShane threw out a 2004 Constitutional same-sex marriage ban.

But the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), has asked the Supreme Court to suspend the ruling.

“In Oregon, not only do we have a single trial court judge imposing his own opinion and invalidating the votes of the overwhelming majority of Oregon voters, but the case involves the state Attorney General refusing to even mount a defense of the people’s decision,” John Eastman, NOM chairman said.

In cases in Utah, Michigan, and Arkansas, same-sex marriage bans were put back into place by higher courts after marriages had already begun, as the state planned to appeal.

However, Oregon’s Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum had sided with the plaintiffs and argued for the ban to be struck down, and an appeal to overturn the ruling is unlikely.

Last month the group filed a last-ditch attempt to defend Oregon’s same-sex marriage ban from a court challenge, after the state’s Attorney General declined to do so.

Despite calls for their request to intervene to be thrown out, judge Michael McShane said he would consider their request to hear the ban.

However, in another legal brief arguing for the right to defend the marriage ban, the group said it was unable to publicly name a single person in the state that wants them to do so.

Following the judgement, Oregon became the eighteenth state to recognise same-sex marriage.

NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher recently admitted that “we are now in the ‘gay marriage in all 50 states’ phase whether we like it or not.”

Previously, Gallagher criticised the decision of a New Jersey governor to sign into law a bill banning the practice of “gay cure” therapy on minors, saying he “banned chastity”.