“Idaho has sufficiently good reasons for maintaining the man-woman marriage institution,” Thomas Perry, attorney for Gov. Butch Otter, told the court. “When you look at benefits, what more compelling interest does the state of Idaho have than securing an ideal child-rearing environment for future generations?”
In the front row of the audience, one of the plaintiffs in the case cried silent tears. “We have a 4-year-old son together,” Shelia Robertson explained afterwards, holding hands with partner Andrea Altmayer. “We’ve been together for 16 years, and it took us a long time, it was a very careful decision for us to have our boy. We love our boy. … The fact that I don’t have any rights to him at all – it’s frightening every day.”
The two are among four Idaho couples who sued to overturn Idaho’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, and its ban on recognition of legal marriages from other states. They, along with another lesbian couple, applied for marriage licenses in Idaho in November and were rejected; two days later, the lawsuit was filed. The other two same-sex couples were legally married in California and New York, but Idaho doesn’t recognize their unions".
Read More at The Spokesman Review
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