Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Mass. Gay Marriage Dispute
The Supreme Court of the United States today declined to hear a case disputing the year-old decision of Massachusetts’s highest state court, which ruled that the right to marry could not be denied to gay couples.
By refusing — without further comment — to hear the case, I feel that the Supreme Court is acting prudently and within the bounds of the law. They are, however, running somewhat afoul of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which states that under federal law marriage is defined only as the union of two persons of opposite sexes. The Supremes have been reluctant to hear cases dealing directly with the DOMA in the past, but their decision not to hear this case could be seen as an indirect weakening of a law that some feel is already ripe for being struck down as unconstitutional. My personal opinion — as stated in my post on SEB about federalism and gay marriage — is that the DOMA is fundamentally flawed, and should be replaced with a similar constitutional amendment that doesn’t contain a nation-wide definition of marriage by gender.
What’s interesting (and amusing) about this is the lame arguments being used by social conservatives to combat the Massachusetts decision. To quote the Associated Press article:
Critics of the November 2003 ruling by the highest court in Massachusetts argue that it violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of a republican form of government in each state. They lost at the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
Their attorney, Mathew Staver, said in a Supreme Court filing that the Constitution should “protect the citizens of Massachusetts from their own state Supreme Court’s usurpation of power.”
Federal courts, he said, should defend people’s right “to live in a republican form of government free from tyranny, whether that comes at the barrel of a gun or by the decree of a court.”
Merita Hopkins, a city attorney in Boston, had told justices in court papers that the people who filed the suit have not shown they suffered an injury and could not bring a challenge to the Supreme Court. “Deeply felt interest in the outcome of a case does not constitute an actual injury,” she said.
Did you catch that? Living in a nation where people of the same sex who love one another are permitted to express that love through marriage and to enjoy the rights and privileges which come with that institution is, apparently, equivalent to living under a tyrannical government with a gun pointed at your head.
I think these nimrods need to spend a few weeks in North Korea. Living under Dear Leader for a month or so might give them a bit of perspective, and help them better appreciate the freedom they enjoy as citizens of the United States of America. Maybe then they wouldn’t be so eager to deny those freedoms to others.
