The California
supreme court on Wednesday refused to review a Sacramento
court of appeal decision from earlier this year upholding
the state's groundbreaking domestic-partnership
laws, effectively ending the challenge by a
notoriously antigay Christian group and allowing the
laws to stand. In its decision the court turned aside
arguments that domestic partnerships are equivalent to
marriage and therefore violate the state's
voter-approved Proposition 22, which defined marriage as the
union of a man and a woman.
"Tens of
thousands of California families feel safer today now that
the attack on their rights by the Campaign for California
Families has failed," said Geoffrey Kors,
executive director of the gay rights group Equality
California, which intervened as a defendant in the case.
"These families will never be truly safe,
however, until full marriage equality is achieved."
The supreme court
will let stand the third district court of appeal's
ruling that upheld two domestic-partnership statutes, one of
which provides hundreds of state-level rights and
protections to same-sex couples and their families.
"This is another great victory for fairness and
equality and the rights of all Californians to protect their
families," said Kate Kendell, executive director for
the National Center for Lesbian Rights and cocounsel
in the case. "Domestic partnership is not
marriage, and the court wisely denied review of misguided
and underhanded attempts to distort the language of
Proposition 22 and strike down validly enacted
legislation that protects lesbian and gay people and
their families." (The Advocate)