A U.S. appeals court on Thursday struck down gay marriage bans in both Wisconsin and Indiana, adding to a rush of major victories for the marriage equality movement in the last year alone.
Though a three-judge panel in the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that both Midwestern marriage bans were unconstitutional, it is not yet clear whether same-sex couples will be able to marry in those states or have their out-of-state marriages recognized. A spokesperson for Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, a Republican, said he would appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and that the hold on same-sex marriages would remain in effect until all appeals have concluded.
Nonetheless, Thursday’s ruling — the fourth from a federal appeals court, and the first one to side unanimously with gay and lesbian couples — marks yet another victory for the marriage equality movement, and pushes the issue even closer to being considered by the nation’s highest court.
Writing for the majority, Judge Richard Posner — a President Reagan appointee, who during oral arguments appeared particularly sensitive to the psychological damage inflicted by having parents who cannot marry — said that the cases were at their core “about the welfare of American children.”
“The argument that the states press hardest in defense of their prohibition of same-sex marriage is that the only reason government encourages marriage is to induce heterosexuals to marry so that there will be fewer ‘accidental births,’ which when they occur outside of marriage often lead to abandonment of the child to the mother (unaided by the father) or to foster care,” wrote Posner in his 40-page opinion. “Overlooked by this argument is that many of those abandoned children are adopted by homosexual couples, and those children would be better off both emotionally and economically if their adoptive parents were married.”









