Rainbow bLAWg

David Boies and Ted Olson, the dynamic duo who helped overturn the California gay-marriage ban that triggered a wave of similar lawsuits, are in Norfolk today, asking a federal judge to throw out Virginia’s ban on same sex marriage.

Virginia’s new Attorney General Mark Herring has said he will not defend the state against the lawsuit brought by their clients, comparing the ban to the state’s prohibition on interracial unions overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967. Said Herring, “Virginia has argued on the wrong side of some of our nation’s landmark cases — in school desegregation in 1954, on interracial marriage.” He is the fourth state attorney general to stop defending a state in a lawsuit over a gay-marriage ban.

Ted Olson, a towering conservative figure and senior Justice Department official under Republican President Ronald Reagan, told U.S. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen, “Virginia erects a wall around its gay and lesbian citizens. What the Commonwealth of Virginia is doing is taking away a fundamental right. It’s the right of individuals, not the right of state, that’s what’s being taken away.”

The two couples being represented have been together for 25 and 30 years, respectively. Timothy Bostic and Tony London originally filed the case a few days after the Supreme Court’s rulings in June. Carol Schall and Mary Townley, the parents of a teenage girl, joined in later. They were married in California and are seeking to have their marriage recognized in their home state.

The judge said he will issue a ruling on the ban soon, though his time frame isn’t clear.

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Carrie Stone