North Carolina Attorney Roy Cooper, and all of North Carolina behind him, are calling it quits. Why should he and the state of North Carolina continue to fight challenges against the state-wide same-sex marriage ban, since it’s futile anyway?
“Simply put, it is time to stop making arguments we will lose and instead move forward, knowing that the ultimate resolution will likely come from the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Cooper, as reported by the L.A. Times.
In words seemingly demoralized and dispirited, he claims the state really doesn’t have much case, and claims, also, that his personal views on the issue, that marriages should be granted to same sex partners, does not interfere with the vigor he would fight for the North Carolina constitution, if only he could.
“There are really no arguments left to make,” he said, noting that he bases this “solely on the futility of the legal arguments made by the state,” and not his personal opinion that same-sex partners should be granted equal marriage rights, both state-wide and federally.
Such seeming exasperation and renouncement comes after Monday’s 2-1 opinion that denounced Virginia’s statewide barring of gay marriage as against the U.S. Constitution. These weighty decision may be stayed till defendants appeal to the full 4th circuit and also the U.S. Supreme Court. That is to say, with the 20 or so major victories gay-marriage advocates have won in the 31 states that still bar same-sex marriage, the sway of changes seems eager to place itself into the highest Court of the land. What is somebody like Roy Cooper supposed to do, faced with such an onslaught?
“This is very significant, to hear Attorney General Cooper say he will no longer defend this law,” said Rev. Jasmine Beach Ferrara, executive director of Campaign for Southern Equality, as reported by Citizen Times. “It means that marriage equality is coming. We can see it on the horizon. Now it’s just a matter of when, and we hope that it will be as quickly as possible.”
“State marriage bans, such as the one we have here in North Carolina, are living on borrowed time,” said Cooper’s would-be opponent, Chris Brook, legal director for North Carolina’s ACLU. “It’s a matter of when – not if—they are struck down.”
And in reference to Cooper, he said, “At a certain point, a good lawyer knows a losing cause when he sees one.”
What’s left for the pursuers of same-sex marriage rights in North Carolina to do is take their complaints to the district court level, and this is the plan of Brook, after Cooper’s bowing out.