HUMAN RIGHTS - Unconstitutional DOMA Update

Marriage, Civil Unions, whatever, IS a matter of Human Rights. I cannot think of anything more applicable to the core of Human Rights and Civil Rights as the relationship between consenting adults.

I believe that government, at ANY level (local, state, federal) should NOT interfere in this area.

It is also my belief that DOMA is government support of a religious doctrine which IS clearly unconstitutional. Marriage is NOT the exclusive domain of ANY religion.

"In Policy Shift, President Orders Halt to Legal Defense of Marriage Law" PBS Newshour Transcript 2/23/2011 (includes video)

Excerpts

GWEN IFILL (Newshour): The Obama administration reversed course today when it announced it will no longer defend in court a federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

Attorney General Eric Holder's letter to House Speaker John Boehner read: "The president and I have concluded that classifications based on sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny, and banning recognition for legally married same-sex couples is unconstitutional."

At the White House today, Press Secretary Jay Carney stopped short of endorsing gay marriage outright.

WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY JAY CARNEY: The president's personal view on same-sex marriage, I think you all have heard him discuss as recently as the press conference at the end of last year.

That is distinct from this legal decision. The decision is that we will -- the administration will not defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the Second Circuit.

Furthermore, the president directed the attorney general not to defend -- because of the decision that it's not constitutional -- defend the Defense of Marriage Act in any other circuit, in any other case.

GWEN IFILL: ....Explain something to me. We heard Jay Carney today make the distinction between a legal decision that the president and the attorney general made and a moral decision. What is that distinction?

CHARLIE SAVAGE, The New York Times: Well, most of the debate over gay marriage in this country has been a very -- on the moral issue, the very basic issue, should gay people have a right to get married?

But this debate, it moves past that one level to a legal issue about what happens after they have already gotten married. There are now eight states, plus the District of Columbia, that either issue marriage licenses to gay couples or recognize such marriages if performed elsewhere.

And so that has raised a new issue, which is this. If there are two sets of gay -- of married couples in a state whose are -- whose marriages are lawfully recognized by that state, is it constitutional for the federal government to treat those people unequally, to hand out certain benefits to one set of marriages -- married couples and not to another based on their sexual orientations?

GWEN IFILL: So, remind people who don't watch this, follow this all the time what exactly the Defense of Marriage Act is, what it did, what it was intended to do.

CHARLIE SAVAGE: The Defense of Marriage Act was passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, a presidential election year.

And it was designed to stop the growth of gay marriage, which then had not even gotten going, but you could see it on the horizon. And so the key issue, the provision that's at issue in these lawsuits that triggered this decision today, says that the federal government will not recognize a marriage unless it involves a man or a woman.

So even if the state of New York, say, says this lesbian couple is lawfully married, this gay couple is lawfully married, the federal government will ignore that -- that distinction. And so when it comes to certain benefits, like, for example, the surviving spouse in a marriage who inherits property from their dead husband or wife does not have to pay estate taxes on that.

But the federal government is charging estate taxes to surviving couples who are in gay marriages, even if those marriages are recognized under their state's laws.

GWEN IFILL: So, what the White House is saying today and the Justice Department is saying today is that they are going to ignore a federal law. They're not going to do what they can to pursue or defend a federal law. How unusual is that?

CHARLIE SAVAGE: Well, I wouldn't say they're going to ignore it. In fact, they're making clear that they're going to keep enforcing this law, unless and until there's a definitive ruling from the courts that says this is unconstitutional, and you, the federal government, must not enforce it.

What they're saying is, when people challenge these laws, when they file a lawsuit saying this violates our constitutional rights, we have a right to equal protection under the law, you can't do this, federal government, the Justice Department is no longer going to come into court and say, no, no, Judge, you should get rid of this lawsuit; there's a perfectly valid reason why this law is constitutional.

They're going to leave the law undefended. And that means that maybe Congress, more likely just the House of Representatives, will appoint its own lawyer to come in as a friend of the court to defend the law, or maybe a judge in a lawsuit will appoint a lawyer to at least make the arguments that the law is constitutional, but the full weight of the Justice Department will no longer be backing these laws in court.