Justice Ginsburg to officiate at same-sex wedding
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| FILE - In this July 24, 2013, file photo Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg poses for a photo in her chambers at the Supreme Court in Washington, before an interview with the Associated Press. Ginsburg will officiate at a same-sex wedding this weekend in what is believed to be a first for a member of the nation’s highest court. Ginsburg will officiate Saturday, aug. 31, 2013, at the marriage of Kennedy Center President Michael Kaiser and John Roberts, a government economist. Kaiser told The Associated Press he asked Ginsburg to officiate because she is a longtime friend. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will officiate at a
same-sex wedding this weekend in what is believed to be a first for a
member of the nation's highest court.
Ginsburg
will officiate Saturday at the marriage of Kennedy Center President
Michael Kaiser and John Roberts, a government economist.
"Michael
Kaiser is a friend and someone I much admire," Ginsburg said in a
written statement Friday. "That
is why I am officiating at his wedding."
The
private ceremony will take place at the Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts, a national memorial to President John F. Kennedy. The
80-year-old Ginsburg, an opera lover, is a frequent guest at the center.
Same-sex marriage is legal in the District of Columbia and 13 states.
"I
think it will be one more statement that people who love each other and
want to live together should be able to enjoy the blessings and the
strife in the marriage relationship," Ginsburg told The Washington Post
in an interview.
"It won't be long before there will be another" performed by a justice. She has another ceremony planned for September.
Kaiser told The Associated Press that he asked Ginsburg to officiate because she is a longtime friend.
"It's
very meaningful mostly to have a friend officiate, and then for someone
of her stature, it's a very big honor," Kaiser said. "I think that
everything that's going on that makes same-sex marriage possible and
visible helps to encourage others and to make the issue seem less of an
issue, to make it just more part of life."
Justices
generally avoid taking stands on political issues. The wedding, though,
comes after the court's landmark ruling in June to expand federal
recognition of same-sex marriages, striking down part of an anti-gay
marriage law.
While hearing arguments in the
case in March, Ginsburg argued for treating marriages equally. The
rights associated with marriage are pervasive, she said, and the law had
created two classes of marriage, full and "skim-milk marriage."
Before
the court heard arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act, Ginsburg told
The New Yorker magazine in March that she had not performed a same-sex
marriage and had not been asked. Justices do officiate at other
weddings, though.
"I don't think anybody's
asking us, because of these cases," she told the magazine. "No one in
the gay-rights movement wants to risk having any member of the court be
criticized or asked to recuse. So I think that's the reason no one has
asked me."
Asked whether she would perform such a wedding in the future, she said: "Why not?"
