DOMA just took a beating at SCOTUS
Last edited Wed Mar 27, 2013, 02:04 PM - Edit history (3)
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tweeted by, Sahil Kapur @sahilkapur 7m
DOMA just took a beating at SCOTUS. Four liberal justices & Kennedy highly skeptical it's constitutional.
Retweeted by Josh Marshall
update on Wednesday hearing from WaPo:
The Obama administration has said that it will not defend the law, known as DOMA, and lower courts have said it is unconstitutional to deny federal benefits to same-sex couples who are legally married in the states where they live while offering the same benefits to opposite-sex married couples. At the same time, however, the administration has said it will continue to enforce the law until the Supreme Court rules.
During Wednesday’s oral arguments, Justice Antonin Scalia remarked on that contradiction, saying it was a “new world” when the attorney general could decide a law is unconstitutional but still enforce it. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, considered a potential swing vote in the case, called that a “questionable practice.”
Technical questions dominated the first part of Wednesday’s oral arguments, with a court-appointed attorney arguing that a group of Republican leaders in the U.S. House of Representatives has no standing to defend DOMA in court . . .
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/on-the-second-day-supreme-court-considers-doma/2013/03/26/331bb5ae-966e-11e2-9e23-09dce87f75a1_story.html
2nd update:
____ Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, thought likely to be the deciding vote as the court held its second day of hearings on same-sex marriage, told the advocate defending the law that it did not really promote “uniformity” in federal law.
Kennedy acknowledged that there were 1,100 references to marriage in the federal code, and that the definition of who is married is “intertwined with daily life.” He questioned whether the federal government may impose its own view of marriage, which has “always thought to be” the domain of the state.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that if those couples don’t receive federal benefits such as tax advantages, Social Security benefits and other recognition, “what kind of marriage is it?’
She said it created two classes: real marriage and “skim-milk marriage.”
read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/on-the-second-day-supreme-court-considers-doma/2013/03/26/331bb5ae-966e-11e2-9e23-09dce87f75a1_story.html?Post+generic=%3Ftid%3Dsm_twitter_washingtonpost
NYCLU @nyclu 2h
PIC: LOOK at the panoramic scene outside #SCOTUS hearings in NYCLU #DOMA case. #united4marriage #time4marriage pic.twitter.com/md46xHzpxt
Retweeted by ACLU National
WaPo updates: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/03/27/supreme-court-hears-oral-arguments-on-doma-live-blog/#liveblog-entry-34003
Audio/Transcript - Wednesday, Supreme Court oral arguments on DOMA
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022574832
= new reply since forum marked as read
I think I agree with scalia. 
it was a “new world” when the attorney general could decide a law is unconstitutional but still enforce it.
to, hopefully, never rise again.
The whole concept is abhorrent. Why should fundy wingnuts be allowed to force the obedience to their religious beliefs onto the lives and bodies of others? 
The answer is obvious: there is NO WAY they should be allowed to coerce others to goose step to their beliefs. 
As always, the whole issue is about the right of the wingnuts to coerce the rest of us into living our lives in accordance with the tenants of their religion, irregardless of what we might believe. It is completely disgusting, and as anti-American as it is possible to get, at least as far as the ideals set out in the Constitution are concerned. (And, I am all too aware of our history, where the dominant religious groups in this country have and continue to attempt to dictate to everyone else.).
The efforts of the wingnuts to dictate to the rest of us deserve to go down to permanent defeat.
If not, any recommendations for a site that is keeping up to date?
"Justice Alito looked for “data” on this “institution which is newer than cell phones.” Same-sex marriage, he said, might turn out to a “good thing”, or “not”, as Proposition 8 supporters “apparently believe.” Justice Scalia said that there is no “scientific answer” to the decisive “harm” question at this time.” Justice Sotomayor asked the Solicitor General: why not “let[] the States experiment” for a few more years, to let society “figure out its direction.”" (from http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/03/commentary-over-the-cliff/#more-161942)
They are saying that same sex marriage is a new thing. The only thing new is that it recently has become legal in some states. But it's been going on for decades. What data is needed? That the world wont end as we know it? Same sex couples have been doing everything that married couples do for decades except enjoy the same benefits. Do the Justices think that if we give same sex couples the same benefits we give opposite sex married couples, that that some how could give a negative outcome? I am totally lost.
Why does the government currently give "married" couples special benefits? Is the intent to encourage marriage? If so, why? If it's because married couples provide stability to society, then the genders shouldnt matter.
Seems to me that there are two issues. One does allowing same sex marriages violate the Constitution? Two, does the Constitution prohibit discrimination based on gender for receiving benefits? I know I am trying to make this too easy.
Just trying to talk it out.