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Who's Afraid of Federalism?
Chuck Anziulewicz
Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 2:26 PM
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I did not expect the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) to be found unconstitutional on 10th Amendment grounds. While it's true that the Constitution doesn't define "marriage," the federal government has complicated the issue by taking a vested interest in married couples for the purposes of tax law and Social Security (among the 1,138 legal benefits, protections, and responsibilities that are automatically bestowed on couples once they marry). Therefore this is not an issue that can be left up to the states to decide individually, since it wouldn't do for a Gay couple that is legally married in Iowa, for instance, to become automatically UN-married once they decide to move somewhere else.Straight couples have never had to jump through these kinds of hoops. Thanks to the "Full Faith & Credit" clause, if any Straight couple flies off to Las Vegas for a drunken weekend and gets married by an Elvis impersonator, that marriage is automatically honored in all 50 states. But because of DOMA, Gay couples are held to a different (and hence unconstitutional) legal standard.The only way marriage can be a "States Rights" issue is for the federal government to get out of the marriage business completely, and do away with the 1,138 benefits it grants to married couples. Tell me how thrilled most married couples would be with THAT.