CT Supreme Court Rules IN FAVOR of Marriage Equality

The Connecticut Supreme Court has ruled in Kerrigan et al v. Commissioner of Public Health et al that Connecticut's statutory civil unions are not the same as marriage.

An excerpt:

Even though the right to marry is not enumerated in
our constitution, it long has been deemed a basic civil
right. E.g., Loving v. Virginia, supra, 388 U.S. 12
(‘‘[m]arriage is one the basic civil rights of man’’ [internal
quotation marks omitted]); Skinner v. Oklahoma
ex rel. Williamson, 316 U.S. 535, 541, 62 S. Ct. 1110, 86
L. Ed. 1655 (1942) (same). Although we traditionally
have viewed that right as limited to a union between a
man and a woman, ‘‘if we have learned anything from
the significant evolution in the prevailing societal views
and official policies toward members of minority races
and toward women over the past half-century, it is that
even the most familiar and generally accepted of social
practices and traditions often mask unfairness and
inequality that frequently is not recognized or appreciated
by those not directly harmed by those practices
or traditions. It is instructive to recall in this regard
that the traditional, well-established legal rules and
practices of our not-so-distant past (1) barred interracial
marriage, (2) upheld the routine exclusion of
women from many occupations and official duties, and
(3) considered the relegation of racial minorities to
separate and assertedly equivalent public facilities and
institutions as constitutionally equal treatment.’’ In re
Marriage Cases, supra, 43 Cal. 4th 853–54.

Like these once prevalent views, our conventional
understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary
appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional
protection. Interpreting our state constitutional
provisions in accordance with firmly established equal
protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion
that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise
qualified same sex partner of their choice. To decide
otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional
principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us
from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional
requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied
the freedom to marry.

And now there are three! (Massachusetts, California and Connecticut.) New York (and New Jersey) will probably happen in 2009.