San Francisco suing state over 'gay' unions

The nearly 3,000 licenses issued to same-sex couples by San Francisco are illegal, announced California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the wake of a suit by the city over state law.

"The marriage certificates submitted to the Department of Health Services by the city and county of San Francisco fail to meet legal standards," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

Yesterday, San Francisco challenged California law defining marriage as a union only between a man and a woman one week after Mayor Gavin Newsom began issuing the licenses.

''The rights afforded by California's Constitution clearly trump laws restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples,'' San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera, told Reuters after filing suit.

The lawsuit asks the San Francisco County Superior Court to rule three sections of the California Family Code prohibiting same-sex marriage run counter to the state constitution.

The suit also targets Proposition 22, a law which restricts marriage to heterosexual couples. The measure was approved four years ago by 60 percent of state voters.

Herrera says both state laws violate the equal protection clause of the California Constitution by discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender.

Two conservative family values groups have also been named in San Francisco's lawsuit. They sued the city in a bid to block it from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The city's lawsuit asks that those cases be consolidated into one.

Opponents of same-sex marriage quickly blasted the city's legal maneuver.

The lawsuit ''is without merit and reflects a spoiled-brat mentality of someone who doesn't like the rule of law,'' charged Randy Thomasson, executive director of Campaign for California Families.

An attorney for his group, Mathew Staver of Florida-based Liberty Counsel, said: ''The city is engaging in blatant delay tactics. They're afraid to reach the merits of this case. That's why they're trying to derail our hearing Friday,'' according to Knight Ridder Newspapers.

Schwarzenegger said Attorney General Bill Lockyer "has assured me that he will vigorously defend the constitutionality of the law."

And as WorldNetDaily reported, a state official says California will not accept thousands of marriage licenses granted to homosexual couples because the city changed the language on the official applications to delete gender-specific terms.

"There is a statewide form that every county has to use for marriage applications," Nicole Kasabian Evans, a spokeswoman for California Health and Human Services, told Reuters.

"If we receive application forms that are different from the single form used throughout the state, we will not accept them."

Meanwhile, license applications are still being issued by city officials as court challenges are heard today.

Several issues scheduled to be heard at 11 a.m. by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Ronald Quidachay could determine whether the challenges of two plaintiffs' cases will be consolidated and, if so, which judge would handle the matter. Quidachay could also hold a previously scheduled hearing at 2 p.m. when attorneys for Campaign for California Families hope to ask the judge to order the city to immediately stop handing out same-sex marriage licenses.

In response to another effort to halt the same-sex wedding march, San Francisco Judge James Warren on Tuesday asked San Francisco to "cease and desist" from issuing more marriage licenses but declined to order penalties or otherwise intervene until he heard legal arguments on March 29, reports Reuters.

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