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" Judge Michael Boudin of the First U.S. Court of Appeals \u2014 who happens to be a Republican, should anyone ask \u2014 would like you all to know that he thinks that the people who pushed for the Defense of Marriage Act back 20 years ago were by and large good folks who simply advocated for, and passed, and got Bill Clinton to sign, a constitutional dog&amp;#039;s breakfast of a law that Boudin late on Thursday morning chucked into Boston Harbor:  &amp;quot;As with the women, the poor and the mentally impaired, gays and lesbians have long been the subject of discrimination.... In reaching our judgment, we do not rely upon the charge that DOMA&amp;#039;s hidden but dominant purpose was hostility to homosexuality. The many legislators who supported DOMA acted from a variety of motives, one central and expressed aim being to preserve the heritage of marriage as traditionally defined over centuries of Western civilization.&amp;#039;&amp;#039; The decision is a careful, but decisive one. (Boudin is one of the most respected jurists in the country. Clerking for him is considered a ticket to The Show down in D.C. One of the judges who joined the opinion, Juan Torruela, was a Reagan appointee.) The court emphasized that its primary objection to DOMA was that it was an unwarrented intrusion by the federal government into an area \u2014 the policies regarding civil marriage \u2014 that have been traditionally left to the states. (A federal court in the People&amp;#039;s Republic of Taxachusetts making a states-rights argument? Dogs and cats, living together.) Moreover, the court points out, various legislatures and state courts have legalized same-sex marriage since DOMA became law, forcing the issue even further. Given that more and more states are allowing same-sex marriage, the court argues, DOMA&amp;#039;s prohibition has become both increasingly unfair and increasingly unworkable. Its inherent discriminatory effects are no longer tenable. Writes Boudin: DOMA affects a thousand or more generic cross-references to marriage in myriad federal laws. In most cases, the changes operate to the disadvantage of same-sex married couples in the half dozen or so states that permit same-sex marriage. The number of couples thus affected is estimated at more than 100,000.3 Further, DOMA has potentially serious adverse consequences, hereafter described, for states that choose to legalize same-sex marriage...Many Americans believe that marriage is the union of a man and a woman, and most Americans live in states where that is the law today. One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage. Moreover, the court was careful to note that states in which same-sex marriage is illegal are not required to recognize same-sex marriages considered valid somewhere else. This has prompted some lovely revisionism on the right to the effect that they all had doubts about DOMA in the first place because they were fearful of congressional overreach. (Aaron Sorkin even worked these arguments into one of those fantasy Reasonable Republicans he was so fond of creating for The West Wing.) Those of you old enough may recall the numerous occasions on which these doubts were raised as DOMA sailed to passage 20 years ago. Yeah, me neither. But Boudin anchored a decision that will bring great joy to the cultural left in legal principles that the right claims to adore above all others. This, of course, has been the problem with DOMA from the start. Terrified by a base that believes the only banging outside heterosexual marriage should happen to Bibles, the Republicans tried to pin Bill Clinton to a card by sending him this troll-bait when Clinton was trying to get re-elected in 1996. Clinton confounded them by signing it, in one of the most soulless acts of triangulation of his career. It has been a law born of political expedience always, and it was cruising for this kind of decision from birth. The list of amicus briefs filed on one side of the case or another runs for five pages and is evidence enough that this one&amp;#039;s headed down to Washington on a rocket sled. (Herman Cain was talking about impeaching justices who overturned DOMA as long ago as last fall.) It will be interesting as hell to watch the gymnastics a states-rights ruling on gay marriage induce in Messrs. Thomas, Scalia, and Alito. I make the Degree of Difficulty 10.5 to start. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14222/doma-ruled-unconstitutional-9312929/>