The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) and other religious groups have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review a federal appeals court’s ruling that a state cannot define marriage as between a man and a woman.
In a friend-of-the-court brief filed Aug. 31, ERLC joined three other religious entities in urging the high court to rule on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ invalidation of Proposition 8, a 2008 amendment approved by California voters that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.
The National Association of Evangelicals filed the brief. The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also signed.
The brief marks another development in the national debate over same-sex “marriage,” an issue that now awaits Supreme Court consideration in two cases and a possible watershed decision.
The Prop 8 case, which was appealed to the high court by its proponents in July, could decide the constitutionality of laws in 44 states that do not recognize gay “marriage.” Thirty states have constitutional amendments and 14 states have laws that define marriage in the traditional sense.
Another case appealed to the justices in June could determine if the federal government may define marriage as only between a man and a woman, as it did in the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
(BP)
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