Lesbian Alabama partners Kim McKeand and Cari Searcy are challenging Alabama’s laws, suing to have their California marriage legitimized in their home state to facilitate Searcy’s adoption of McKeand’s child.
The two women won a contest to travel to California and be married legally in 2008, before Proposition 8 was passed by voters (and before it was overturned by the Supreme Court). Prop 8 had upheld marriage as only between one man and one woman in California.
McKeand gave birth to son Khaya in 2005. Searcy has attempted, unsuccessfully, to be granted status as a legal parent to Khaya.
Searcy and McKeand’s recent lawsuit to have their California marriage recognized in Alabama was filed against Alabama’s governor and attorney general, reports San Diego’s ABC News affiliate, 10 News. The report notes that 70 lawsuits have been filed, similar to and including this one, in states that do not recognize non-traditional marriage.
According to CNS News, the Alabama women’s lawsuit claims Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage is in violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Attorney General Luther Strange, one of the defendants in the lawsuit, was quoted as saying, “Alabamians overwhelmingly voted to incorporate it (traditional marriage) into our laws.”
Californians passed Prop 8 in 2008, in the same election in which they voted by a large majority to elect Barack Obama president. Leftist activists took legal action through courts until the issue finally reached the Supreme Court. In 2013, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to Prop 8 for lack of legal standing by plaintiffs who took up the case after both Attorney General (later Governor) Jerry Brown and Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris refused to defend the measure in court.
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