Today, a three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, was unconstitutional.

“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently. There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”

“Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples,” states the opinion written by Judge Reinhardt.

The Declaration of Independence says that we have the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. In the 1967 US Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, Chief Justice Warren wrote: “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

There is nothing disorderly about expressing love with both rights and responsibilities.

We are moving forward.