On her MSNBC show Friday, Rachel Maddow
opined that a federal ruling striking down Utah's gay marriage ban
“feels different.”
U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby
surprised everyone by handing down his ruling more than 2 weeks
before his January 7 self-imposed deadline.
Shelby said that Amendment 3, the
state's 2004 voter-approved constitutional amendment which limits
marriage to heterosexual unions, violates the 14th
Amendment.
(Related: Marriage
rush: Utah gay couples tie the knot.)
“Does this Utah decision today just
feel like it's a bigger deal than all the others because, forgive me,
it's freaking Utah!” Maddow rhetorically asked her views.
Maddow's guest, Kenji Yoshino, a law
professor at New York University, agreed that the case had the
possibility of drastically altering the marriage equality landscape
in the United States.
“Same-sex marriage advocates never
thought that they would get Utah in the next decade,” Yoshino said.
“To have it happen today is extraordinary.”
“The big deal about this case is that
they've used the nuclear option, A, and said, 'We're gonna bring a
federal constitutional challenge to this,'” he added. “But also,
'We're gonna use Windsor, we're gonna use that Windsor
case.'”
Windsor is the Supreme Court
case that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which led
to federal recognition of the legal marriages of gay couples. It is
being cited in legal challenges to similar bans throughout the
country.
(Watch
the entire segment at MSNBC.)