An issue of individual liberty and equal protection under the law is again being left to the politicized Supreme Court instead of having a clear and explicit U.S. Constitution embracing the letter and spirit of the Bill of Rights, Equal Protection Clause, and Full Faith and Credit Clause. In this day and age, there should not be any issue to consider when it comes to every citizen’s civil rights.
Removing the religious trimmings of marriage in recognition of the constitutional separation of church and state, it is at its core a legally binding covenant that every couple has a right to enter into. For whatever reason, be it economic, procreation, child welfare, or a declaration of love and commitment in front of a communion of friends and relations, two fully competent and consenting individuals must be able to enter into a contract of marriage. To set limitations based on race, sex, or other social and cultural distinctions would be clearly against a modern U.S. Constitution.
The Defense of Marriage Act should not have passed constitutional muster to begin with. It is the federal government dictating to sovereign states what they can and cannot do that is not in violation of the US Constitution. The motive was clearly economic, religions, political, and bureaucratic, and it was enacted under the guise of preventing a new class from receiving federal benefits. That may be so but a bureaucratic problem requires a bureaucratic solution, not a backdoor maneuver around the Constitution. It also run smack against the Full Faith and Credit Clause which precludes other states from not recognizing the legitimate laws of the other states.
How and why did we get to the current DOMA morass? We need not be in it if we only modernize the language and spirit of the living US Constitution
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