Prop. 8 plaintiffs believe love will prevail in Supreme Court

On the steps of the Supreme Court, moments after their attorneys argued that gays and lesbians should be given the constitutional right to marry Tuesday, California plaintiffs in the Proposition 8 case said they are looking forward to the high court’s ruling.

“Like all Americans, I believe in equality,” said Sandy Stier, who has been waiting more than a decade to marry her partner, Kris Perry.

“But more than anything, I believe in love.”

FULL COVERAGE: Same-sex marriage ban

Stier said Prop. 8, which bans gay marriage in California, is a discriminatory law that hurts people – both gays and lesbians and their children.

Two of the couple’s children, twin sons, stood at the press conference in support.

“I just want to say how incredibly proud we are of our parents,” Spencer Perry said. “We love them. We love our family and we look forward to the day when we will be treated equally, just like our neighbors’ families.”

Their statements came after the lawyer defending California’s ban drew skeptical questions from swing justices on the first of two historic days of oral arguments.

Charles J. Cooper, whose clients include citizens who voted for California’s 2008 Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage, tried to convince the justices that states should have the right to limit marriage to heterosexual couples because they can produce children. Cooper warned that expanding marriage could have unknown but harmful effects.

But that drew sharp interrogation from the court’s liberal justices, and an emotionally tinged question from Justice Anthony Kennedy, widely seen as a key swing vote in the case.

Kennedy, while acknowledging that the long-term effects of legalized gay marriage are unknown, suggested that the tens of thousands of children of gay and lesbian couples in California have a voice in the case as well. “They want their parents to have full recognition,” he said.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pounded Cooper for linking marriage to child-bearing, with Kagan asking if states could also prohibit couples over age 55 from getting married. Cooper responded that even in that case, at least one member of the marriage would likely still be fertile, a suggestion that drew laughter from the courtroom.

On the conservative wing of the court, Justice Antonin Scalia jumped most forcefully to Cooper’s defense, suggesting that it is unclear whether the children of gay couples may suffer long-term damage.

Cooper was also pressed hard on a key technical issue in the case that could foreclose a more sweeping ruling from the justices about whether gay and lesbian Americans have the right to marry.

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noam.levy@latimes.com

kimi.yoshino@latimes.com