http://www.wowvownow.com/gay-marriage-states-2/
Is the decision of gay marriage left to the states or to Congress?
We do have DOMA in effect (as of 1996, thank you Clinton…), but we also have Massachusetts legalizing gay marriage. Although these laws are supposed to left to the states (according to the Constitution), Marriage does have it’s benefits from federal government: So, is Gay Marriage a state or federal issue?
Currently, the decision of gay marriage is left to the both the states and Congress. Many states have passed bans against same sex marriage, and the Defense of Marriage Act signed by Bill Clinton in 1996 says that states do not have to recognize laws of other states in regards to same sex marriage (while having to recognize other state laws such as driver licensing).
In 1958 Richard Loving, a white male, married Mildred Jeter, a woman of African-American and American Indian descent, in the District of Columbia. When they moved to the state of Virginia, which had laws that banned marriages between any white person and a non-white person, they were told that their marriage was illegal and were sentenced to one year in prison, with the sentence suspended for 25 years on condition that the couple leave the state of Virginia. The Lovings filed a lawsuit that eventually made it’s way to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), which ruled in 1967 that laws preventing marriage between those of a different race were unconstitutional and, in its decision, wrote “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.”
Some rights are so inherent that they should be allowed to cross state lines. This is neither a state issue or a congressional issue… it is a Constitutional Issue and the 14th amendment states that the government should not “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” which is now usually referred to as the equal protection clause. Although many people do not realize this, the greatest amount of power granted to the President of the US is to name a nominee to SCOTUS, whose decisions can last for decades instead of years.
Issues of equality have been historically been decided by the the courts from the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision to the Loving v. Virginia decision to the Romer v. Evans decision.
States can pass laws, and congress can pass laws, but that does not mean that they are Constitutional. Every now and then they need to be reminded that everyone should enjoy the “equal protection of the laws” that should not favor one group over another and that all men are, indeed, created equal.
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