Today was a busy day on the same-sex marriage front.
First, Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to Congress announcing that the Obama administration now holds the Defense of Marriage Act — the federal law that defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman — to be unconstitutional.
Then, attorneys David Boies and Theodore Olson, who are representing same-sex couples in their suit to overturn California’s own same-sex marriage ban, announced that they had filed two important motions in the case:
First, they asked the California Supreme Court to move up the date for oral arguments in its consideration of whether Proposition 8 proponents have legal standing to defend that initiative when state officeholders have declined to do so.
Second, they requested that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals lift a stay on a lower court’s ruling that declared Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional. If the court agrees to lift the stay — far from a certainty — same-sex couples would be free to marry during the time the federal case is being decided.