On July 26, 2006, the Supreme Court of the State of Washington ruled 5-4 to deny equal rights to same-sex couples in regard to civil marriage. You can read the court’s opinion here. A very insightful article dissecting the opinion in plain English can be found here. This article was written by attorney Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry. A very brief excerpt:
The illogic of the rationales, the lack of connection between the purported end and the discriminatory means, alone should have established the ban’s unconstitutionality even more solidly than the weakness of the rationales themselves. Add to that the double standard (marriage is so important, a fundamental right even, when it comes to heterosexuals, but the denial of marriage to gay people is somehow trivial and warrants minimal, indeed no, scrutiny) and what results is no more than a refusal to enforce the constitutional safeguards against the unfair treatment of some.
