High court sets stage for historic gay marriage ruling
RALEIGH (WTVD) -- Advocates on both sides of the gay marriage debate in North Carolina were glad to learn the U.S. Supreme Court will resolve the issue for the entire nation.
Justices for highest court in the nation will hear cases from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee together in 2-1/2 hours of oral arguments in April and will issue a ruling before the current term ends in late June.
"All in all, I am apprehensively optimistic," said Brett Currier, who is a third year UNC-Chapel Hill law student and self-proclaimed law nerd.
For Currier the outcome is personal because he's planning to marry his fiance Michael Evans in March.
"I love my partner. We've been together for 10-1/2 years and I want to put a ring on it to quote Beyonce," he exclaimed to ABC 11.
Currier's marriage prospects became legal in North Carolina last October when two federal court rulings reversed a voter-approved state constitutional ban.
In hearing the cases, the justices will determine whether the 14th Amendment requires states to license same-sex couples and whether states elsewhere have to recognize those unions.
"The people voted by 61 percent to pass an amendment that would protect the existing definition of marriage, realizing that government doesn't define marriage, God does," said Tami Fitzgerald with NC Value Coalition, which bills itself as a non-partisan, statewide network advocating for pro-family positions.
Fitzgerald says the timing of the high court's announcement is good because North Carolina's same-sex marriage ban is now on appeal. Last week, North Carolina Sen. Phil Berger, president pro tem of the N.C. Senate, and Tim Moore filed a petition to bypass that appeal to take it straight to the Supreme Court.
"If the Supreme Court issues a favorable ruling then the marriage laws in North Carolina will go back to what they were before," explained Fitzgerald.
North Carolina is one of 36 states that currently recognize gay marriages. Gay couples contend they want recognition everywhere they go.
"I think the people who are still fighting against gay marriage have really honest and earnest religious beliefs," explained Currier. "I think it is true is that gay marriage doesn't undermine their marriage."
