For April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, the Hazel Park parents of three who brought the suit, their desire is simple.
“Everyone recognizes that marriage means family, and that’s what we want,” DeBoer said after the trial.
However, the arguments about whether they should be afforded the opportunity are anything but.
For the plaintiffs, it’s an issue of equality. They said the ban violates the U.S. Constitution’s provision for equal protection and due process under the law. It’s an argument echoed in courtrooms throughout the U.S., and one that’s rendered state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional in states such as Virginia and Utah.
But unlike other states, the challenge in Michigan went to trial. In October, Judge Bernard Friedman denied requests from both sides to make an immediate decision in the case, citing “triable issues of fact” that must be debated.
As a result, the trial hinged almost solely on testimony from scholars who studied whether children raised in same-sex households fare as well as children raised by heterosexual couples.
Assistant state attorney Kristin Heyse said the plaintiffs “attempted to make this case about something it’s not,” and that Friedman should rule based upon “the social science and data.”
The majority of research on the topic has found that there is no difference between households, and the plaintiffs used experts to reinforce what attorney Kenneth Mogill called “a strong consensus” amongst social scientists.
The plaintiffs also had experts testify that marriage is an evolving institution and public opinion on same-sex relations is changing.
State attorneys produced a series of experts who argued that either there is no valid consensus on the issue or that children in same-sex households fared w orse.
Some of the experts authored papers that critiqued dozens of studies on same-sex parenting. They said the studies were deeply flawed, noting that some studies drew from small samples and many surveys were based on volunteer responses.
In Friday’s concluding argument, Mogill attempted to wrest Friedman’s focus from the litany of testimony that had preceded it and back to the crux of the plaintiff’s argument-that marriage is a fundamental right.
“No other group in society is required to establish its parents’ competence before being entitled to the right to marry,” Mogill said.
Mogill said the trial’s testimony was irrelevant to the core of the case.
“They want to try to cast this matter as a social science experiment,” Mogill said. “Life is not an experiment, it’s reality.
“This case is about real people’s lives, real children’s lives and vulnerabilities and needs ... the question whether they are entitled to the same rights as opposite sex-families and their children goes much deeper than any social science experiment.”
Heyse in turn said that Michigan voters in 2004 had a rational basis for enacting the ban, which received ?59 percent of the vote, and that the plaintiffs had failed to prove they did not.
She said the ban was instituted “not to denigrate other family structures,” but was enacted “to promote what the majority of people think is the best environment for raising children,” which she said is a heterosexual household.
Heyse also asked the judge to issue a stay in the event the ban is overturned, insinuating that the state might appeal the ruling.
Judge Friedman said he will issue his written opinio n as soon as it is completed.
