Federal Court Declares “Defense of Marriage Act” Unconstitutional

[kpete]

Source: ACLU Blog

Federal Court Declares “Defense of Marriage Act” Unconstitutional

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: [phone]; [email protected]

NEW YORK – A federal judge ruled today that a critical section of the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) unconstitutionally discriminates against married same-sex couples. Today’s decision joins four other federal courts that have struck down DOMA under the Constitution.

The statute had been challenged by Edith “Edie” Windsor, who sued the government for failing to recognize her marriage to her partner Thea Spyer, after Spyer’s death in 2009. Windsor and Spyer were married in Canada in 2007, and were considered married by their home state of New York.

“Thea and I shared our lives together for 44 years, and I miss her each and every day,” said Windsor. “It’s thrilling to have a court finally recognize how unfair it is for the government to have treated us as though we were strangers.”

In her lawsuit, Windsor argues that DOMA violates the equal protection guarantee of the U.S. Constitution because it requires the government to treat same-sex couples who are legally married as though they were not, in fact, married. Windsor's lawsuit was filed by the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York Civil Liberties Union

Read more: http://www.aclu.org/lgbt-rights/federal-court-declares-defense-marriage-act-unconstitutional

[iandhr]

1. This is great news.

But I still worry. Is there risk to the legal suits now with the Supreme Court we have? A negative ruling from them can set gay rights back a long way.

[cstanleytech]

2. It wouldnt be the first time the court made a bad decision. The Dred Scott decision

for example is one that should never have been made yet they did it.

[efhmc]

3. Dred Scott helped to solidify, hasten the civil war.

"The Dred Scott decision served as an eye-opener to Northerners who believed that slavery was tolerable as long as it stayed in the South. If the decision took away any power Congress once had to regulate slavery in new territories, these once-skeptics reasoned, slavery could quickly expand into much of the western United States. And once slavery expanded into the territories, it could spread quickly into the once-free states. Lincoln addressed this growing fear during a speech in Springfield, Illinois on June 17, 1858:

'Put this and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court decision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. . . . We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall awake to the reality instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State.'

For many Northerners who had remained silent on the issue, this very real possibility was too scary to ignore. Suddenly many Northerners who had not previously been against the South and against slavery began to realize that if they did not stop slavery now, they might never again have the chance. This growing fear in the North helped further contribute to the Civil War.

http://www.watson.org/~lisa/blackhistory/scott/impact.html

[azurnoir]

4. K&R and once again just how is same sex marriage so different from any other marriage

that there are laws against it? simple it's not different the difference is bigotry pure and simple

[Fearless]

5. It doesn't have to make sense to you or I

It just has to help the fundies sleep better at night not having to question their own feelings regarding sexuality, hetero or homosexual in nature.

[Quantess]

6. K & R