Significant Court Ruling in Europe

Marriage neutering advocates and marriage defenders both have things to like and dislike about a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. Jill Lawless, Paisley Dodds, and George Jahn reported on the story for the Associated Press.

Seven judges at the European court ruled unanimously that two Austrian men denied permission to wed were not covered by the guarantee of the right to marry enshrined in Europe's human rights convention.

Interesting. I wonder what all the people who say the USA should be more like Europe say to this?

The judges acknowledged "an emerging European consensus" that same-sex couples should have legal recognition but said individual states may still decide what form it should take because marriage had "deep-rooted social and cultural connotations which may differ largely from one society to another."

Based on what we've seen, most Americans would support keeping marriage a bride+groom institution, but also having domestic partnerships or civil unions, mostly for same-sex couples. This is a compromise. Even some people who disapprove of homosexual behavior are open to this, but others aren't. However, advocates of marriage neutering refuse to accept this compromise, and will support domestic partnership or civil union laws primarily as a Trojan Horse, as we've seen.

[Read more after the jump.]

Six EU states - Belgium, The Netherlands, Sweden, Portugal, Norway and Spain - have legalized gay marriage. About a dozen others, including Britain, Germany, France and - since January - Austria, have legal partnerships, which carry much the same status as marriage.

Vote with your feet.

Despite Thursday's ruling, there was little to cheer opponents of gay marriage. The judges noted that the European rights charter was drawn up in 1950, when "marriage was clearly understood in the traditional sense of being a union between partners of different sex." They said that was lo longer automatically the case.

"The Court would no longer consider that the right to marry ... must in all circumstances be limited to marriage between two persons of the opposite sex," the judges said.

In other words, they would not force Sweden to restore the bride+groom requirement.

Legal experts said the European Court ruling would not have a significant impact.

"It just means that questions of marriage are within the margin of discretion of particular states," said British human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson. "Each state is entitled to have its own marriage law. I don't think it will have many implications here or elsewhere."

Where have we heard talk like that before?