Boston Federal District Court Wrongly Rules "Defense Of Marriage Act" Unconstitutional

The Boston Globe reports that a "federal district court judge in Boston today struck down the 1996 federal law that defines marriage as a union exclusively between a man and a woman. Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled that the federal Defense of Marriage law violates the Constitutional right of married same-sex couples to equal protection under the law and upends the federal government’s long history of allowing states to set their own marriage laws."

"This court has determined that it is clearly within the authority of the Commonwealth to recognize same-sex marriages among its residents, and to afford those individuals in same-sex marriages any benefits, rights, and privileges to which they are entitled by virtue of their marital status," Tauro wrote. "The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state." The Justice Department had argued that Congress and President Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), had a legitimate interest in preserving marriage as a heterosexual institution in relation to relevant federal laws. However, the Judge attempted to paint his ruling as both a Tenth Amendment ruling protecting the State's power to create its own marriage laws, and a matter of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause which says States must provide "equal protection of the laws."

Kris Mineau, president of Massachusetts Family Institute correctly called it “another blatant example of a judge playing legislator.” Mineau said in a statement that “same-sex marriage activists have tried time and time again to win public approval of their agenda, and they have failed each time. This is why their strategy is to force same-sex ‘marriage’ through judicial fiat, as they did here in Massachusetts and other states.” This is a troubling but not entirely new trend as the federal judiciary refuses to faithfully apply the Constitution and instead substitutes its own will for that of the legislature and the original meaning of the Constitution itself.

But even more, the ruling is ridiculous because DOMA was meant to protect the State ability to determine its own policy on marriage, to allow for different States to maintain their own traditional marriage laws without having to change their own rules to accommodate a marriage from a State that allows gay marriage. It was meant to stop one State from having to apply another State's law which defines marriage as including homosexual couples. This is a longstanding principle regarding conflicts of law between States when there is a conflict in regards to a matter of legitimate public policy. This is further permitted despite the Full Faith and Credit Clause because Congress is permitted under that Clause to prescribe "the Effect" to be accorded to the laws of a sister State.

Furthermore, DOMA does not even deal with the right to marry itself, but rather the right to receive federal benefits. DOMA simply stated that in relation to federal laws such as those regarding federal benefits, marriage was to be accorded its traditional meaning. However, States are still completely free to redefine marriage if they so choose, and to use their own funds as they wish. Federal law not recognizing a certain subset of marriages that appear in a certain subset of the States for the purposes of federal funds is not a violation of the Fourteenth or the Tenth Amendments. It is not a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment because DOMA applies the longstanding definition of marriage, which in fact predates American law itself, equally to all applicable in matters of federal benefits. It cannot possibly be a Tenth Amendment issue because it is not State funds that are even at play and DOMA is in no way interfering with the State ability to define marriage for purposes of State law. The Tenth Amendment is too rarely cited by the federal courts in cases even though it should be cited often, but on the rare occasion like this one that it is cited it is done in a way that simply makes no sense at all.
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