Today is oral argument in Windsor v. United States, challenging the Defense of Marriage Act.
We have not followed the DOMA litigation very carefully to date.
We did cover the secondary boycott effort directed at the King & Spalding law firm. There was a truly abysmal threat to picket and boycott clients of the firm that had nothing to do with the DOMA litigation as a means of forcing the firm to give up representation of the House of Representatives after the Department of Justice abruptly changed positions on the constitutionality of the law.
Regardless of how one feels about gay marriage or DOMA, the King & Spalding secondary boycott was a low mark. The law firm also represented GITMO detainees, so imagine the media and legal profession outcry if there were a secondary boycott organized against the firm as a means of forcing it to drop that representation.
The King & Spalding secondary boycott was another step towards total political war, where even people who have no involvement in an issue are used as pawns and pressure points.
As mentioned, we haven’t followed the merits of the DOMA litigation much, so I’ll have to defer to others. SCOTUSblog has a good summary (also here). There are federalism issues about the role of the federal government in an issue traditionally left to the states, which has blurred the usual right-left divide. There also is an issue of who has standing to defend the statute (also here) now that the DOJ refuses to do to.
Argument starts just after 10 a.m.
[Twitter feed removed]
Update: Argument recap: DOMA is in trouble.
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Comments
Watching the coverage of the case, the liberal media is great at playing up the unfairness of the estate tax burden placed on Windsor after the death of her partner. Don’t get me wrong, $360,000 is a hefty tax bill but when did libs suddenly find a tax on rich people so distasteful?
I happen to know a couple who would prefer they get their marriage equality when the one partner’s daughter has completed college. For now she is treated as a child of a single mother for tax purposes and on the FAFSA forms. She gets aid she will never qualify for once the total household income is actually considered. Meanwhile they take several elaborate vacations a year while the rest of us are scraping to pay the full freight at colleges at exorbitant prices the magical FAFSA forms tell us we can “afford”.
Looks as though Scotusblog is predicting 80% chance the couple I know gets their fairness sooner than they would like. I guess we’ll see how that works out in June.
We have the transcript of Day One SCOTUS Proposition 8 hearing (Gay Marriage) posted now…
http://commoncts.blogspot.com/2013/03/supreme-court-proposition-8-transcript.html
If the argument is equal rights and protection, then all unions, whether sexual or platonic, in any numbers and combination, must be afforded equal rights and benefits. If they reject evolutionary principles as an objective standard, then the advocates and supporters for normalizing homosexual behavior must recognize all unions to have equal stature.
Furthermore, if the winning argument is equal rights and protection, then this debate is also about elective abortions. There is no credible argument to selectively and capriciously discriminate between individuals by their stage of development. All men and women have an unalienable Right to Life, among other things, from “creation.”
The issue is far more expansive and general than merely normalizing homosexual behavior. The advocates and supporters of homosexual marriage must recognize this or they are demonstrating a unique and selective prejudice.
As for DOMA, the Constitution favors procreative unions.
We the People of the United States … secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity