California Marriage Law Challenged

Ten months after San Francisco's mayor defiantly granted marriage licenses to thousands of gay couples, a judge began hearing arguments Wednesday in a pair of lawsuits that seek to have California's one-man, one-woman matrimony law declared unconstitutional.

Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer's courtroom is only the first stop in what is expected to be a yearlong odyssey that ultimately could reach the state's highest court.

The consolidated cases were brought by the city of San Francisco and gay advocacy groups representing a dozen same-sex couples. They seek to put California on par with Massachusetts, the only state where gays can legally wed.

"The assertion that marriage is inherently heterosexual can no longer be maintained now that there are a number of jurisdictions that allow same-sex couples to marry," Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said in a packed courtroom.

The state government maintains that the progress the state already has made in advancing gay rights is sufficient to ward off a constitutional challenge.

"This is not a state like other states, where rights have been denied same-sex couples," Senior Assistant Attorney General Louis Mauro said previously. "The issue is whether it's unconstitutional to provide those rights and benefits without calling it marriage."

The state also contends that if Californians want to legalize same-sex marriage, the way to do it is through the Legislature or a ballot proposition, not the courts. Two Christian legal groups have joined the state's position.

At issue is a 1977 amendment to the California Family Code that defined marriage as "a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between a man and a woman." Before that, the law on marriages was silent on the subject of gender.

CBSNews.com Legal Analyst Andrew Cohen says this is a huge deal because it's at this level, at the trial level, where facts will be developed that the appellate courts will have to evaluate when they make their rulings at some point down the road.

So no matter who wins or loses at this level, says Cohen, it will be the testimony and the exhibits that will have the biggest impact upon who ultimately prevails at the Supreme Court.

The lawsuits are an outgrowth of Mayor Gavin Newsom's decision last winter to openly challenge state law by granting marriage licenses to gays, about 4,000 couples in all.

In his arguments, Minter listed Massachusetts, Canada, Belgium and South Africa as among the places gay marriage is legal.

The judge said he would rule sometime after mid-January.