DOMA, Media and My Family

I am a Supreme Court geek. Some might go so far to say that I am a junkie. Even when the cases aren't momunmental to a culture shift I pay attention. www.SCOTUSblog.com is my goto source for all third branch of government happenings. Each year the docket of cases the Supreme Court takes up is scrutinized by the media. The ones that get talked about are high profile, socially relevant and all show up on the docket with the potential to change how we read the constutiton. By the way, they are ranked in importance in that order. If we just look at the two cases everyone wanted to hear about you can boil it down to a boxing metaphor. DOMA was a knockout and Prop 8 lost on points.

SCOTUS watch for the last two weeks has been all about what the rulings on DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) and Prop 8 (the California law banning marriage of same sex couples). A lot of conversation in the run up and through the cases being heard was focused on Prop 8. Not because it was the better case, it's the better story. Much has been written about this storied ballot item. How Prop 8 was a respone to the state allowing for same-sex couples to marry without a change to the state constitution. Mostly it became a lightening rod because it cut to the heart of whether or not marriage is limited to being defined as solely an institution between a man and a woman. The case is mired in a ton of legal back and forth and to be clear the Supreme Court today did not rule on that point.

Quite the contrary, the Supreme Court said something very different in the Perry Case regarding Prop 8. They simply said the case had no legal standing to be brought to federal court. The reason being that the State of California didn't defend the law, proponents (in this case Hollingsworth) took up the case when both the State Attorney General and Governor would not do so and the Court ruled that a proponent did not have legal standing in the federal court. Yes this is in the weeds, but it is important because to read the headlines and commentary you would think Prop 8 had been struck down. It wasn't, it was simply dismissed from Federal court. By doing so the Supreme Court held that marriage remains (as it always has been) a state issue. Don't get me wrong, I think Prop 8 is a crappy law but that wasn't what got ruled on today. What was reinforced was that the Supreme Court upheld the State's rights to define marriage. Over the last year many states have filed and passed laws supporting marriage equality. Today's decision supports that through democratic process, not the courts this cultural shift will occur.

For me the more monumental case was DOMA. The court striking down DOMA as unconstitutional is vitally important. It just wasn't as sexy. The law signed by President Clinton in 1996 was always a bad law. The federal government defining marriage was always an overreach and fundamentally flawed as it was built to descriminate by denying equal rights to all citizens. DOMA blocked the path of many couples to receive federal benefits automatically given to "traditional marriages".  By striking down this law the Supreme Court clearly states that equal rights apply to all. 

For me that was a reason to celebrate. Marriage equality is not about how we define marriage. It is about how we define humanity. This week's ruling from the court, alongside the Loving ruling 46 years ago telegraphs an important American value. Our citizens are created equal. When we as a government provide benefits we can not exclude whole classes of citizens. DOMA's demise is huge because it walks our constitution's talk.

When you cut through the headlines and you abandon the bullypulpits what you are left with is a very profound message - families are born out of love. It doesn't matter what they look like. As someone who has been looked at and described by media generalizations as "other" for being a woman or Hispanic or a single parent and sometimes all three together I know there are people who would rather pigeonhole different as bad. While the Supreme Court may not sway opinion it did protect its citizens from being perpetrated as other and that is a step in the right direction. 

So as a Supreme Court junkie, a person who is surrounded by a cornucopia of families and someone who was giddy to see justice prevail what happened in the Supreme Court matters to me. It should matter to all of us because humanity should always be the guiding principle in how our society changes.