Oklahoma's ban on same-sex marriage causes far-reaching harm to thousands of couples in the state and their children, attorneys for two lesbian couples argued in a brief filed Monday with a federal appeals court, according to the Associated Press.
The ban, approved in 2004, was based on "deeply held - but constitutionally impermissible - moral disapproval" and cannot withstand scrutiny under the 14th Amendment's guarantees of due process and equal protection, the attorneys said, the AP reported.
Denying marriage to same-sex couples "writes inequality across countless areas of law that confer substantial benefits and obligations based on marital status, and harms as well as humiliates a growing number of children raised by same-sex couples who are legally classified as strangers by their state," the brief states, according to the AP.
U.S. District Judge Terence Kern, of Tulsa, struck down Oklahoma's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage in January, ruling that it violated the couple's 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law for no rational reason, the AP reported.
Kern's ruling was that Oklahoma couldn't meet even the least stringent standard for a law that didn't afford the same rights to all, according to the AP.
Attorneys for the Oklahoma couples, including University of Oklahoma law professor Joseph Thai and Norman attorney Don Holladay, argued in their brief that Oklahoma's law should be subjected to a tougher standard than Kern applied, the AP reported.
"In fact, intermediate scrutiny should be the appropriate level of review," they argued to the appeals court, according to the AP.
"In all critical respects - including a long history of severe discrimination against gays and lesbians that persists today - classifications on the basis of sexual orientation warrant the same level of skepticism, and demand the same level of justification, as discrimination on the basis of gender," the AP reported.
