Today, the Wisconsin state Supreme Court issued its ruling in the case of William C. McConkey v. J. B. Van Hollen, upholding the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-gender marriage. Discouraging news, right?

Hardly.

The question before the court was not, in fact, whether or not the marriage ban was discriminatory, but rather whether or not it was passed in an appropriate way. Under Wisconsin law, referendum questions can only address one issue at a time; McConkey, a straight ally who largely brought the lawsuit on his own, charged that the ballot question banning both same-gender marriage and a status “identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals” was really two separate ballot questions presented as one, and should thus be thrown out. According to Katie Belanger, Executive Director of Fair Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court has yet to consider whether or not the ban violates Wisconsinites’ 14th Amendment rights to equal protection under the law.

Belanger told TheColu.mn that while the state LGBT rights lobby group Fair Wisconsin filed an amicus brief in the case, in cooperation with Lambda Legal and the ACLU, the group largely did not have a hand in the lawsuit. With the amicus brief, Belanger said, Fair Wisconsin was trying to make sure the court only focused on how the ballot question was presented, and not on any broader questions of equal protection. Reminiscent of OutFront’s approach to the Marry Me Minnesota lawsuit in Minnesota, Belanger said that Fair Wisconsin was afraid any ruling that was not strongly supportive of equality would damage a case they had before the Supreme Court testing the constitutionality of last year’s domestic partnership legislation. That case was thrown out in December of last year, Belanger said.

Belanger said that Fair Wisconsin’s main strategy in fighting the anti-marriage equality amendment has been, and will continue to be, electing enough pro-equality legislators to make a repeal possible.