In Case You Missed It (And You Probably Did)
Last Friday evening, near midnight, a revolutionary document appeared. Not from a bunch of Tea Party whackos wanting to secede from Great Britain the United States, but from the Federal Government itself.
It was a legal brief, dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. And that they are endowed with a certain inalienable fundamental right, the right to marry whom they please. And that the Crown Federal Government has no business deciding which marriages it will or will not recognize.
In the case of Golinski v US Office of Personnel Management the Department of Justice declared that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was, in its opinion, unconstitutional. And further, in what some describe as a stunning admission, that
"The federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals."
Not content to simply refuse to defend DOMA, as they said they would back in February, the Executive has now taken an active role in attempting to have DOMA declared unconstitutional, in a perhaps unprecedented challenge to the US House of Representatives which is committed to defending it in court.
And the brief's effects are already being felt. In a case involving the deportation of a same-sex spouse, a judge re-opened the proceedings without prompting based, partially, on the DoJ's filing in Golinski.
More info here.
It was a legal brief, dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. And that they are endowed with a certain inalienable fundamental right, the right to marry whom they please. And that the Crown Federal Government has no business deciding which marriages it will or will not recognize.
In the case of Golinski v US Office of Personnel Management the Department of Justice declared that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was, in its opinion, unconstitutional. And further, in what some describe as a stunning admission, that
"The federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals."
Not content to simply refuse to defend DOMA, as they said they would back in February, the Executive has now taken an active role in attempting to have DOMA declared unconstitutional, in a perhaps unprecedented challenge to the US House of Representatives which is committed to defending it in court.
And the brief's effects are already being felt. In a case involving the deportation of a same-sex spouse, a judge re-opened the proceedings without prompting based, partially, on the DoJ's filing in Golinski.
More info here.