To the courts

LET'S START WITH the hall of shame: Attorney General Bill Lockyer didn't need to file a lawsuit demanding San Francisco stop issuing same-sex marriage licenses. There was, and is, no compelling state interest here; there's no conceivable logical way to argue that what's happened in San Francisco over the past four weeks did any harm to anyone. As City Attorney Dennis Herrera noted in his legal brief opposing Lockyer, marriage, not anarchy, has broken out in San Francisco.

Lockyer could easily have stood aside on this one and let the cases filed by the right-wing religious fanatics work their way slowly through the court system. He could have said (and it would have been the truth) that there was no reason for the attorney general to intervene. Instead he forced the state Supreme Court to take on the issue immediately and to order a halt to the marriages. All you had to do was walk through City Hall March 11 to see the anger and sadness the decision caused.

Still, even Herrera admits that once Lockyer took on the case, a decision like this wasn't unexpected. And it's really just a temporary setback. As Paul Reidinger points out on page 18, the justices didn't specifically rule against same-sex marriage; they just said San Francisco officials can't defy state law without going to court first. And the same day the ruling came down, Herrera filed suit asking a judge to rule that the ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional. That's exactly the right move – and the judge who is assigned to the case should grant the city's motion as quickly as possible.

Ultimately, the state Supreme Court will rule on this issue – and before the marriages can continue, the justices will have to issue a final ruling on whether Mayor Gavin Newsom had the authority to declare state laws banning same-sex marriage unconstitutional. The high court should move on that issue without delay and rescind its injunction while it considers the larger question of the legality of gay marriage. The final disposition could take a year or more, and in the meantime there's no reason not to let people get married.