Laura Berman writes in the Detroit News that the state of Michigan's fight in U.S. District Court in Detroit against the prohibition against adoption by same-sex couples seems like a modern-day Scopes "monkey" trial, which tested a teacher’s right to teach evolution in the 1920s.
She notes that in the two years since the case began, same-sex marriage has become legal legal in 17 states and judges have struck down bans against it in four states.
It’s the state of Michigan that’s paddling against a Niagara of social change. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman’s decision to hear this case seemed modestly bold last spring. No more.
On Wednesday, a Texas federal judge struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage. That was just two days after U.S. Attorney Eric Holder encouraged state attorneys general to decline defending same sex-marriage bans — advice that Michigan’s Bill Schuette ignored, as he gamely sent his assistants into trial.
Inside Judge Friedman’s courtroom, plaintiff attorneys are making the case that children raised by gay and lesbian parents do just fine, thank you.
“We would like this to be the last trial in America where same-sex parents have to defend themselves,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Carole Stanyar, said during opening arguments in the case.
