A landmark federal trial that could lead to a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry ended Wednesday with competing views about the traditional role of marriage and whether the battle represented the latest frontier of the nation’s civil rights struggle.<\/p>\n
Two stalwarts of Washington’s conservative legal community argued before Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, but this time on opposite sides.<\/p>\n
Walker is being asked to decide whether California voters violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantees of due process and equal protection when they passed a referendum in November 2008 to amend the state constitution, defining marriage as between a man and a woman.<\/p>\n
Washington lawyer Charles J. Cooper, arguing on behalf of Proposition 8 backers, told Walker that it is “crucial to the public interest” to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples. It is “fundamental to the very existence and survival of the human race” that society promote marriage to ensure that procreative relations are in “enduring, stable unions,” with a goal that children be raised by both parents.<\/p>\n