Supreme Court DOMA Decision Rules Federal Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional Posted: 06/26/2013 10:03 am EDT | Updated: 06/26/2013 10:12 am EDT WASHINGTON -- The Defense of Marriage Act, the law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages legalized by the states, is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday by a 5-4 vote. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/26/supreme-court-doma-decision_n_3454811.html Just came out.
I'm still trying to figure out why the federal government would be involved with marriage in the first place.
Precisely! In regards to the ruling, I could care less who marries whom. If someone wants to marry a zucchini or a goat or someone of the same sex, let them be happy. The government has no right to tell us who we can or cannot marry. The issue I do have is that the Supreme Court likes to defend the Constitution when it suits them, and toss it aside when it does not.
I think that is what SCOTUS decided. DOMA isn't a federal government domain, it is a state domain. The same with prop 8. Let the states decide. But, this allows the states to determine federal benefits. And, I doubt this is seen as good in the eyes of God. America is falling further from grace every day.
You mean plummeting from the sky like a meteor? And correct, the states won't be able to determine federal benefits which is what makes this issue such a mess.
"I'm still trying to figure out why the federal government would be involved with marriage in the first place." Some clues for you: "history", "marriage".
DOMA was enacted after the Massachusetts state supreme court engaged in an act of blatant judicial legislating and found a state constitutional right to gay marraige. That opened up the prospect of the federal government having to distinguish between employees who were married in the eyes of one state but not another. Now five members of the Supreme Court have come down fully on the side of gay rights activism, which is considerably more extreme in the legal profession than in normal society. While they didn;t rule that there was a constitutional right to gay marriage, they came very close and their language surely indicates how they woul drule on such a case. The closest analogy is the Roe v. Wade abortion cases, where the justices invented constitutional rights out of whole cloth to achieve the end result they felt was appropriate. It was an exercise of raw judical power that encroached on both the constitution, federalism and democractic rights. My sense is that this latest decision may be even worse. The constitutional arguments are so weak as to be laughable. At least in Roe, they were dealing with the serious issue of a woman bearing a child. Here it is mainly an issue of the gay rights crowd sticking their finger in their opponents' eye. The states are not able in the Court's latest rulings to control who votes in elections or even ask people to prove they are here legally, but suddenly the states get this enormous degree of leeway to tell the federal govenrment how it must treat its own employees based on marital status. It makes no sense whatsoever, except as naked judicial activism. Justice Scalia's dissent summed it up nicely: "In the majority's telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us. The truth is more complicated. It is hard to admit that one's political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today's Court can handle. Too bad. A reminder that disagreement over something so fundamental as marriage can still be politically legitimate would have been a fit task for what in earlier times was called the judicial temperament. We might have covered ourselves with honor today, by promising all sides of this debate that it was theirs to settle and that we would respect their resolution. We might have let the People decide. But that the majority will not do. Some will rejoice in today's decision, and some will despair at it; that is the nature of a controversy that matters so much to so many. But the Court has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat. We owed both of them better. I dissent."