Comments on: Federal Repeal of the Constitutional Right to Self Govern

By: sulmak

sulmak — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 03:41:45 +0000

1. Equality under the law is not guaranteed by the constitution or the 14th amend for federal law, and DOMA is federal law.

2. Even if it was, you have the following situation

a. A federal law prevents recognition of marriage to same sex couples

b. A state marriage license grants marriage to SSC’s

there are two possible interpretations

I. Only the licenses held by SSC’s are invalid under the law

II. All licenses that can be granted to SSC’s are invalid under the law, including those granted to straight couples that could also be granted to SSC’s.

even if (I) is invalidated, (II) still stands.

3.There is no reason that a gay person still can’t marry someone of the opposite sex for tax/benefit purposes, so they are still equal under the law to straight people anyway.

By: trimulchio

trimulchio — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 01:24:14 +0000

on Family Law issues. How do we choose to make a “Federal Case” out of this WITHOUT equal protection issues?

By: zachv

zachv — Thu, 31 May 2012 18:28:59 +0000

To those that don’t know: the MA Appeals court ruled DOMA unconstitutional today, which makes it the eight time (?) by my count to have had that ruling come across.

The problem is that the six soon to be nine states that issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples don’t make a distinction between opposite and same-sex couples. All of these opposite and same-sex couple literally have the exact same marriage license but DOMA still does not allow same-sex couples to have federal benefits like joint tax filing, spousal immigration rights or SS benefits.

It simply is impossible to argue that DOMA is not a violation of equality under the law when all couples are presenting to you the exact same certificate. By the time the Supremes take this up they’ll have to use a backhoe to dig themselves out of the set under-court precedent.