LGBT
Related: About this forumAnother court finds Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional
Another federal judge has found unconstitutional a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law which forbids providing federal government benefits to same-sex spouses.
U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White, who sits in San Francisco and was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, issued the ruling Wednesday afternoon in a case involving federal judicial law clerk Karen Golinski's request for benefits for her female spouse. White said the stated goals of DOMA, passed in 1996 and signed by President Bill Clinton, could not pass muster under a so-called "heightened scrutiny" test or even a lower "rational basis" threshhold.
"The imposition of subjective moral beliefs of a majority upon a minority cannot provide a justification for the legislation. The obligation of the Court is 'to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code,'" White wrote. "Tradition alone, however, cannot form an adequate justification for a law....The 'ancient lineage of a classification does not render it legitimate....Instead, the government must have an interest separate and apart from the fact of tradition itself."
White's 43-page decision (posted here) is similar to a ruling from a federal judge in Massachusetts in 2010, who also struck down an aspect of DOMA.
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Link: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2012/02/another-court-finds-defense-of-marriage-act-unconstitutional-115243.html
One more nail in DOMA's coffin.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)Xipe Totec
(43,866 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)HillWilliam
(3,310 posts)partly or wholly unconstitutional until it's struck down and gone?
This waiting is making me tired. And when I get tired I get cranky . . .
justiceischeap
(14,040 posts)Which would, in turn, help the Prop 8 case if it goes to the USSC.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)William769
(55,047 posts)I am getting nasty PM'S because I am intolerant. I am being told that homosexuality is not cut and dry as to being a choice or not.
If there is anybody and do mean any on this board that think they are going to change my mind or convince me that I don't know what I am talking about, or that I see boogey men where they don't exist, they are sorely mistaken.
And I will not, I repeat, I will not be silenced when it comes to bigotry, hatred, veiled innuendos or anything I consider against the LGBT community as slander. I will call it out I will shout it from the mountaintops and I will make them crawl back into the creepy little hole from which they came.
This shit has gone on long enough yes this is "One more nail in DOMA's coffin" it's also one more nail in the coffin of the people who think they are better than me.
beyurslf
(6,755 posts)What the hell difference does it make if it is a choice? Religion is a choice and it is protected. Hell, we carve out exceptions in law for people and their damned religions!
RetiredTrotskyite
(1,507 posts)if the haters can convince themselves that being gay is a choice, they are justified in denying us rights/trying to force us to "change".