Gay Hawaii
According to KHON news, a Honolulu news station, a federal appeals court ruled today that California’s ban on same-sex marriage is illegal and could possibly a precedent for a Hawaii case arguing civil unions don’t go far enough. The attorney representing the plaintiffs in the Hawaii case says the California ruling is similar and different. The plaintiff’s position is this: in California, the state ruled on whether it could deprive a minority of a right they already had with respect to marriage, without getting into the question of how fundamental that right was. The issue was simply could they be deprived of that right, and without a rational basis, the court ruled that it couldn’t. Hawaii is a little different because the plaintiffs are arguing for a right that gay and lesbian couples never had, though they came close to it in Hawaii’s new civil union law. In 1996, the Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples being denied marriage was discriminatory. Gay marriage was not enacted prior to a state constitutional amendment against it in 1998. Because GLBT couples here have never had that right, the plaintiffs are arguing that the state cannot deny them the right to marry when they’ve given them everything else that goes with marriage.
So these developments could have a major influence in gay Hawaii travel patterns. If more than just civil unions are permitted, in the form of marriage, it could mean more GLBT couples will be interesting in booking more gay Hawaii vacations. Needless to say, this subject will continue to be topic of great interest to the Hawaii gay community.
