Gay marriage fights intensify in US

BOSTON, July 11 (Reuters) Massachusetts' highest court has ruled that voters could decide whether to ban gay marriage in the first and only state to legalize it, while a California court weighed the constitutionality of such a ban.

The latest developments in the state-by-state battle over homosexual unions came four days after two major legal setbacks for backers of same-sex marriage in New York and Georgia and reflect entrenched divisions on the issue nationwide.

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's unanimous ruling frees state lawmakers to vote on a constitutional amendment on Wednesday that would ban both gay marriage and civil unions.

If 50 lawmakers in the state's 200-member Legislature approve the measure, it goes to a second legislative vote in 2007. If it clears that hurdle, it will be added to a 2008 ballot for a popular vote.

''We're elated,'' said Kristian Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute, a conservative Christian organization. ''We've got a lot of momentum going.'' Despite their legal ruling, two Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court justices cautioned that even if voters approve a ban on gay marriage, such a law would look ''starkly out of place'' in the state constitution and could cause the court to revisit the issue.

In a concurring opinion, Justices John Greaney and Roderick Ireland said same-sex marriage may be irreversible in Massachusetts because it was now part of the ''fabric of the equality and liberty'' guaranteed by the state constitution.

''The only effect of a positive vote will be to make same-sex couples, and their families, unequal to everyone else; this is discrimination in its rawest form,'' they said yesterday.

CALIFORNIA WEIGHS SIX CASES In 2003, Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court ruled that a ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, paving the way for America's first same-sex marriages the following year. More than 8,000 gay and lesbian couples have since wed.

Connecticut and Vermont allow same-sex civil unions, while California, Hawaii, Maine, New Jersey and Washington, D.C.

offer gay and lesbian couples some legal rights as partners.

But these steps have provoked an angry backlash from voters elsewhere in the nation.

Marriage is defined as the union of one man and one woman in at least 41 states and voters in at least 18 have overwhelmingly approved ''defense of marriage'' amendments to their state constitutions. Several more states will vote on the issue in November.

Last week, Georgia's Supreme Court unanimously reaffirmed a state ban on same-sex marriage and New York's Court of Appeals ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry does not violate the state constitution.

The legal fight over marriage intensified in California on Monday as its Court of Appeal weighed six cases on whether its state constitution, which bars discrimination, can exclude same-sex couples from marriage.

''I would not be surprised if the Court of the Appeal would say ... we should have same-sex marriage,'' said David Levine, a law professor at University of California, Hastings College.

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