By John Mack Freeman
Florida: In just eight days, two Florida counties had judges strike down that state’s same sex marriage bans. The first was in the Keys followed by Miami-Dade County. Judge Zabel ruled in favor of the plaintiffs Equality Florida and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, stating in one part of the ruling “The answer to the question of whether it is constitutionally permissible to deprive same-sex couples of the right to marry has become increasingly obvious: Of course it is not.”Â
North Carolina: The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. In light of this decision, the state attorney general Roy Cooper has elected to stop defending the ban. Although it was approved in 2012 with 61 percent of the vote, Cooper said that it was time to stop spending time on “making arguments we will lose.” Other states in the same circuit (notably South Carolina) have said that they will not stop defending their own bans.
