Equality in New Mexico! Merry Christmas!

From the Albuquerque Journal:

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of same-sex couples, granting them all the same rights of marriage enjoyed by heterosexual couples. 

The court’s 31-page ruling states, in part, that: “All rights, protections, and responsibilities that result from the marital relationship shall apply equally to both same-gender and opposite-gender married couples.”

From the opinion:

Although this question arouse sincerely-felt religious beliefs both in favor and against same-gender marriages, our analysis does not and cannot depend on religious doctrine without violating the Constitution....

Procreation is not the overriding purpose of the New Mexico marriage laws. The purpose of the New Mexico marriage laws is to bring stability and order to the legal relationships of committed couples by defining their rights and responsibilities as to one another, their property, and their children, if they choose to have children....

We fail to see how depriving committed same-gender couples, who want to marry and raise families, of federal and state marital benefits and protections will result in responsible child-rearing by heterosexual married couples. ...

Excluding same-gender couples from civil marriage prevents children of same-gender couples from enjoying the security that flows from the rights, protections, and responsibilities that accompany civil marriage. There is no substantial relationship between New Mexico's marriage laws and the purported governmental interest of responsible child-rearing. There is nothing rational about a law that penalizes children by depriving them of state and federal benefits because the government disapproves of their parents' sexual orientation.