Case
On April 11, 2001, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) sued the Massachusetts Department of Health in Superior Court on behalf of seven same-sex couples, all residents of Massachusetts, who had been denied marriage licenses in March and April 2001. All the plaintiffs had been in long-term relationships with their partners and had several children. The Department's responsibilities included setting policies under which city and town clerks issue marriage licenses. The Superior Court judge ruled in favor of the Department on May 7, 2002, and the plaintiffs appealed directly to the Supreme Judicial Court.
Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly argued in his brief that the Court should defer to the Legislature's judgment of "the broader public interest" and recognize "same-sex couples cannot procreate on their own and therefore cannot accomplish the 'main object'...of marriage as historically understood."
Read more about this topic: Goodridge V. Department Of Public Health
Famous quotes containing the word case:
“Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.”
—Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)
“Television is an excellent system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator.”
—Marc Fumaroli (b. 1932)
“A woman’s whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless—for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.”
—Washington Irving (1783–1859)