Much to the surprise of me and most of my friends, a federal judge ruled on Friday that Utah's prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
Also, in an unrelated case, there was recently a surprising ruling having to do with polygamy in Utah.<\/p>\n
But there's been a lot of confusion and a little misinformation floating around, so I wanted to clear some stuff up.<\/p>\n
First: Utah did not legalize polygamy. Last weekend, a federal judge ruled that Utah can no longer prosecute people for “cohabition”—that is, for “living together in what appeared to be a polygamous relationship,” as an NPR article<\/a> puts it. But you can still only have one legal spouse at a time.<\/p>\n As for marriage equality: Friday's ruling was a huge and awesome step forward, but it wasn't a final decision, because it's being appealed.<\/p>\n The ruling takes effect immediately, and so some Utahns, including a state senator<\/a>, are getting same-sex-married right away. Yay!<\/p>\n But in the past, such rulings have almost always been quickly followed by a stay, pending resolution of appeals.<\/p>\n Equality on Trial has some updates on the state of the appeal<\/a>. Short version: The state has asked the district court's judge to stay his ruling, but it sounds like the court may not decide whether to issue a stay for a few days yet, and during that time weddings are proceeding.<\/p>\n (The state actually had the chutzpah to say that issuing the stay would protect same-sex couples, because without the stay, such couples might get married but would remain uncertain about whether their marriages would be revoked.)<\/p>\n In the Prop 8 case in California, Judge Walker's ruling was appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which I gather is notoriously liberal. But in this case in Utah, the appeals court is the Tenth Circuit, which I gather tends to be moderate-to-conservative. I have no idea whether that means they're likely to overturn the lower court's ruling or not.<\/p>\n However they decide, though, their decision will almost certainly get appealed to the Supreme Court. Which may decide not to take it, but all this will take time; I suspect that Utah's legal position on this issue won't be settled 'til late 2014 at the earliest. But I could be way off; I'm just guessing.<\/p>\n