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| White House press secretary Jay Carney pauses during his daily news briefing at the White House in Washington, Thursday, Feb., 28, 2013. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- In a historic argument for gay rights, President Barack Obama on
Thursday urged the Supreme Court to overturn California's same-sex
marriage ban and turn a skeptical eye on similar prohibitions across the
country.
The Obama administration's
friend-of-the-court brief marked the first time a U.S. president has
urged the high court to expand the right of gays and lesbians to wed.
The filing unequivocally calls on the justices to strike down
California's Proposition 8 ballot measure, although it stops short of
the soaring rhetoric on marriage equality Obama expressed in his
inaugural address in January.
California is
one of eight states that give gay couples all the benefits of marriage
through civil unions or domestic partnership but don't allow them to
wed. The denial of marriage to same-sex couples, "particularly where
California at the same time grants same-sex partners all the substantive
rights of marriage, violates equal protection," the administration
said.
The administration's position, if
adopted by the court, would likely result in gay marriage becoming legal
in the seven other states: Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New
Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island.
In the longer
term, the administration urges the justices to subject laws that
discriminate on sexual orientation to more rigorous review than usual, a
standard that would imperil other state bans on same-sex marriage.
The
brief marks the president's most expansive view of gay marriage and
signals that he is moving away from his previous assertion that states
should determine their own marriage laws. Obama, a former constitutional
law professor, signed off on the administration's legal argument last
week following lengthy discussions with Attorney General Eric Holder and
Solicitor General Donald Verrilli.
