By Laurie Higgins -
Today in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defines marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, is unconstitutional. This decision compels the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) to provide federal benefits to homosexual couples who have “married” in states that have jettisoned sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage. This decision does not require states to legalize same-sex “marriage.”
In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia excoriated the presumptuousness (and incomprehensibility) of the majority opinion:
This case is about power in several respects. It is about the power of our people to govern themselves, and the power of this Court to pronounce the law. Today’s opinion aggrandizes the latter, with the predictable consequence of diminishing the former. We have no power to decide this case. And even if we did, we have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation. The Court’s errors on both points spring forth from the same diseased root: an exalted conception of the role of this institution in America.
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