Indiana's same-sex marriage ban upheld

The Indiana Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a state law that prohibits same-sex marriage, in part citing the work of a Utah attorney who advocates traditional marriage.

The ruling rejected a challenge to a 1997 law by three homosexual couples and the Indiana Civil Liberties Union. The group was considering an appeal, ICLU legal director Ken Falk said.

The court said that opposite-sex couples were distinguished from same-sex couples because they can produce children and that the couples who filed the lawsuit did not establish that they had a "core value" right to marry.

"Opposite-sex marriage furthers the legitimate state interest in encouraging opposite-sex couples to procreate responsibly and have and raise children within a stable environment," the ruling said.

The decision cited attorney Monte Stewart, president of Provo-based Marriage Law Foundation, who disagrees with an earlier Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in that state and other similar decisions.

"They (decisions) miss the states' point that marriage's vital purpose in our societies is not to mandate man/woman procreation but to ameliorate its consequences," wrote Stewart, who led a campaign supporting a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and other so-called marriage substitutes, such as civil unions. Utah voters approved the amendment, which took effect Jan. 1, making federal court the only venue to challenge Utah's law that bars same-sex marriage.

However, Scott McCoy, Utah attorney who led the Don't Amend Alliance campaign against the amendment, said the ruling's reasoning doesn't make sense.

"Basically, what they are saying is because it is so easy to create out-of-wedlock birth, and accidents can happen with casual sex, they need to give marriage to straight people, who might screw up and need to protect their children," McCoy said.

"Marriage not only encourages (couples) to have children, it also encourages them to stay together," he said. "That is an argument that could be used to justify granting marriage to same-sex couples."

Stewart said it makes sense that the state would differentiate between same-sex and heterosexual couples by looking at marriage as "private welfare for children."

"Marriage is what ties, it's a social institution that ties the father to the child and the often-vulnerable mother," he said.