A potential huge loss of freedom for 10% of the US

LadyJazzer wrote: It won't take long for SCOTUS to figure out that the rights of one group of people should not be put to a popular vote by a majority of the people of a state. The 14th Amendment wasn't ambiguous. If black civil rights had been put to a popular vote, we'd still have slavery...and the GOP would have their dream of cheaper labor...

It will take even less time for SCOTUS to figure out that equal protection of the law isn't being abridged. Every legal protection accessible to those that are married are available to homosexual couples who are not married. Marriage from a governmental perspective is a civil contract, something that is readily available to homosexual couples without changing a single thing.

LadyJazzer wrote: It won't take long for SCOTUS to figure out that the rights of one group of people should not be put to a popular vote by a majority of the people of a state. The 14th Amendment wasn't ambiguous. If black civil rights had been put to a popular vote, we'd still have slavery...and the GOP would have their dream of cheaper labor...

The country still has cheap labor... illegals... which is something the GOP wants to change.

SFB also fails to acknowledge that the GOP was founded as a single issue party - abolishing slavery -it doesn't fit with her revisionist tall tales. If we still had slavery, it would be because the Democrats refused to vote for abolishing it.

PrintSmith wrote:

LadyJazzer wrote: It won't take long for SCOTUS to figure out that the rights of one group of people should not be put to a popular vote by a majority of the people of a state. The 14th Amendment wasn't ambiguous. If black civil rights had been put to a popular vote, we'd still have slavery...and the GOP would have their dream of cheaper labor...

It will take even less time for SCOTUS to figure out that equal protection of the law isn't being abridged. Every legal protection accessible to those that are married are available to homosexual couples who are not married. Marriage from a governmental perspective is a civil contract, something that is readily available to homosexual couples without changing a single thing.

So it is your understanding that homosexual couples can file joint tax returns, receive the other partner's social security benefits, obtain insurance benefits through their partner's insurance policy, etc., just as married heterosexual couples may? I don't think so.

PrintSmith wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: DOMA was the federal government getting involved in the marriage business, taking it away from the states. The Obama administration is refusing to enforce it as unconstitutional, while the House GOP is spending taxpayer's money to try to enforce DOMA on the states.

Not exactly sure how you come up with that interpretation Dog. The title of Section 2 of the law reads "Powers Reserved to the States". Section 3 simply clarifies what the definition of the words "marriage" and "spouse" are with regards to federal legislation passed by Congress are so that the judiciary has a clear and precise definition with which to work when dealing with questions of legislative intent when those words are used in any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States. Congress and agencies of the federal government may substitute "life partner" or "domestic partner" or any number of other terms to ensure that federal legislation and regulations include same-sex couples when that is their intent, but they didn't want to run into a situation where a judge might "interpret" the meaning of the words "marriage" and "spouse" in a manner other than the ones Congress or federal agencies intended when they wrote laws and regulations that were either already on the books or that would be written in the future.

No, under DOMA, states do not have to recognize under the full faith and credit provision of the constitution the legal marriage of same sex couples.

Something the Dog Said wrote: So it is your understanding that homosexual couples can file joint tax returns, receive the other partner's social security benefits, obtain insurance benefits through their partner's insurance policy, etc., just as married heterosexual couples may? I don't think so.

Depends on the contract for the insurance that they purchase. There certainly are companies out there which offer those benefits to homosexual couples. The general Congress can, at any time, alter the law about who is eligible for Social Security survivor benefits without worrying one bit about which States do and which States do not recognize homosexual marriage - it's a federal program, not a State one. The States have nothing more to say about federal program benefits than the federal government does about how a State chooses to define marriage. Democrats had a filibuster proof majority in the Senate, a 59% majority in the House and the Oval Office and did nothing to alter the law to grant homosexual couples those benefits, and they now want to lay that failure at the feet of the Republicans? Seriously? That's like the current discussion in the Colorado legislature about the civil union bill. The Democrats had control of the State legislature and the Governor's office for four years and did nothing, but it is somehow now the Republican's fault that it isn't done?

Something the Dog Said wrote:

PrintSmith wrote:

LadyJazzer wrote: It won't take long for SCOTUS to figure out that the rights of one group of people should not be put to a popular vote by a majority of the people of a state. The 14th Amendment wasn't ambiguous. If black civil rights had been put to a popular vote, we'd still have slavery...and the GOP would have their dream of cheaper labor...

It will take even less time for SCOTUS to figure out that equal protection of the law isn't being abridged. Every legal protection accessible to those that are married are available to homosexual couples who are not married. Marriage from a governmental perspective is a civil contract, something that is readily available to homosexual couples without changing a single thing.

So it is your understanding that homosexual couples can file joint tax returns, receive the other partner's social security benefits, obtain insurance benefits through their partner's insurance policy, etc., just as married heterosexual couples may? I don't think so.

Gee, that would have been like telling the Lovings that they had every legal protection available--as long as one of them could either switch to white, (or black) so that they wouldn't be a bi-racial couple. Only the bigots could come up with such an answer. Since there are over 1500 separate legal and tax advantages that are available to married couples, that are not available to gay marriage partners as a result of DOMA, we KNOW that's a lie.

LadyJazzer wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote:

PrintSmith wrote:

LadyJazzer wrote: It won't take long for SCOTUS to figure out that the rights of one group of people should not be put to a popular vote by a majority of the people of a state. The 14th Amendment wasn't ambiguous. If black civil rights had been put to a popular vote, we'd still have slavery...and the GOP would have their dream of cheaper labor...

It will take even less time for SCOTUS to figure out that equal protection of the law isn't being abridged. Every legal protection accessible to those that are married are available to homosexual couples who are not married. Marriage from a governmental perspective is a civil contract, something that is readily available to homosexual couples without changing a single thing.

So it is your understanding that homosexual couples can file joint tax returns, receive the other partner's social security benefits, obtain insurance benefits through their partner's insurance policy, etc., just as married heterosexual couples may? I don't think so.

Gee, that would have been like telling the Lovings that they had every legal protection available--as long as one of them could either switch to white, (or black) so that they wouldn't be a bi-racial couple. Only the bigots could come up with such an answer. Since there are over 1500 separate legal and tax advantages that are available to married couples, that are not available to gay marriage partners as a result of DOMA, we KNOW that's a lie.

Terrible... I don't know how it could pass both houses of Congress by large majorities and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996.

Something the Dog Said wrote:

PrintSmith wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: DOMA was the federal government getting involved in the marriage business, taking it away from the states. The Obama administration is refusing to enforce it as unconstitutional, while the House GOP is spending taxpayer's money to try to enforce DOMA on the states.

Not exactly sure how you come up with that interpretation Dog. The title of Section 2 of the law reads "Powers Reserved to the States". Section 3 simply clarifies what the definition of the words "marriage" and "spouse" are with regards to federal legislation passed by Congress are so that the judiciary has a clear and precise definition with which to work when dealing with questions of legislative intent when those words are used in any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States. Congress and agencies of the federal government may substitute "life partner" or "domestic partner" or any number of other terms to ensure that federal legislation and regulations include same-sex couples when that is their intent, but they didn't want to run into a situation where a judge might "interpret" the meaning of the words "marriage" and "spouse" in a manner other than the ones Congress or federal agencies intended when they wrote laws and regulations that were either already on the books or that would be written in the future.

No, under DOMA, states do not have to recognize under the full faith and credit provision of the constitution the legal marriage of same sex couples.

And they do not have to do that because marriage, which Congress was not delegated the authority to define by the Constitution, falls under Amendment 10 of the Constitution which said that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are reserved to the States or to the people. Germany doesn't have to recognize homosexual marriages, or any marriages for that matter, performed under the authority of another sovereign government if they don't want to. State governments are sovereign, the power to define marriage rests with them - even President Obama acknowledges that. The power to define marriage was not one of the powers delegated to the United States by the States in the Constitution. That is what Section 2 of DOMA, the one entitled "Powers Reserved to the States", recognizes. There is no statute which requires Colorado to recognize the marriages performed in Nevada either, but since both States had always shared the same definition of what a marriage was, that was an easy accommodation for them to make in the interests of their federal relations with each other. Having dissimilar definitions makes that much more difficult to accomplish - which is why the path of least resistance is for every level of government to abandon defining marriage at all. Treating every union between two or more individuals who wish to enter into that legal arrangement with each other as a civil contractual arrangement gets rid of the issue since it then becomes a matter of legal public records, which no State can fail to give full faith and credit to.

Why the LGBT community insists on having their unions declared to be marriages instead of partnering with the States' Rights community to get government out of marriage entirely is simply beyond me. It's a much easier sell and it gets both sides something they are seeking - each State recognizing their unions in the exact same manner as the ones between heterosexuals and less power in the hands of government. Lobby the federal government to change the Social Security laws to replace "marriage" and "spouse" with "civil union" and "domestic partner", which would satisfy the DOMA law as written without repealing it. Why pick a fight when you don't have to? Those of us interested in smaller government are going to support getting government out of defining what a marriage is and what it isn't. As I have noted many times in the past, very recently in a different thread with which you expressed agreement, government shouldn't be in the business of defining what is and isn't marriage at all, at any level - it reduces individual freedom and liberty. Government's only interest is in making sure that the legal relationships that the citizens entwine themselves in is recorded on the public records so that if any disputes arise at any later point in time, the contract that they entered into with each other has been documented and can be fairly and justly adjudicated by the courts.

We can both get something we want here - I get smaller government and the LGBT community gets to have their unions recognized by the civil authorities in the same manner as heterosexual ones are. Is the "progressive" community willing to compromise and sacrifice the "marriage" and "spouse" monikers in order to achieve their end goal? If so, we can work together and both get something we want from the deal.

So according to you, Congress does not have the power to define marriage, yet DOMA did just that.