California Leaders Lobby Congress to End Discriminatory Law
by Brian Leubitz
There are a few facts that should probably come up first here. DOMA is unconstitutional. It violates the full faith and credit clause in addition to equal protection and due process claims. And that will be decided at some point soon, as the case is now at the appellate court level. However, for the time being the law is on the books, and we need to eliminate it.
Sen. Feinstein has been pushing DOMA repeal this legislative session, and got the bill out of the Judiciary Committee on a party line vote last week. Now Governor Brown and several California Mayors are pressing Congressional leaders to repeal as well.
The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act “is a stain on our common values,” Lee and 14 other mayors and governors from around the nation said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted last week to repeal the law.
In a separate letter, Brown noted that 18,000 gay and lesbian couples were legally wed in California in the five months before November 2008, when voters reinstated the ban on same-sex marriage by passing Proposition 8. Those marriages remain valid despite a state Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8, which is now being challenged in federal court.
“Californians in these marriages deserve to be treated the same by the federal government and other states as Californians in other legal marriages,” Brown told the Senate committee. (SF Chronicle)
Other California signatories to the Mayoral letter were Mayors Villaraigosa of LA and Sanders of San Diego.
1. The equal protection clause , as written, was not meant to protect homosexual rights.They are not a protected class, and that was not the intent of those who wrote it.
2. Congress has the prerogative to dictate what goes under full faith and credit.” Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
3. The idea that a far-left state should be allowed to dictate policy for the entire United States is judicial tyranny.
We are asking a more important question. Do we live in a democracy or a tyranny? Shall the majority rule the minority or shall the minority rule the majority?
The majority has spoken every place when the people have had a chance to speak. NO TO Homosexual marriage. No to alternative lifestyles.
Similar to the Southern slaveowners and Southern segregationists who tried to subvert the will of the people through acts that violated the will of the people a la Dred Scott and fillibusters and other loopholes , the far-left is trying to make the people obsolete and rule by fiat.
when what they’re trying to achieve is less marriage.
Sorry to be posting what I know is a fairly flippant comment on a serious issue of basic rights. But, I mean, honestly, can’t they even think through the name of their stupid initiative?