Free Republic

News reports that California's Prop 8 has been struck down as unconstitutional are completely false. Proposition 8 is the amendment to the California Constitution that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman. A federal trial judge--Vaughn Walker--held that Prop 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court held that only the losing defendants in that case--the governor and attorney general of California--had standing to appeal that decision. When they refused to do so, Prop 8's official sponsors filed the appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit,...

<p>Under the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages even in states that have legalized it. This week, the Supreme Court ruled DOMA unconstitutional.</p> <p>There are two possible grounds, distinct and in some ways contradictory, for doing so. The curious thing about the Court’s DOMA decision is that it contains both rationales.</p>

WASHINGTON — A majority of the justices on Wednesday questioned the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, as the Supreme Court took up the volatile issue of same-sex marriage for a second day. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, widely considered the swing vote on the divided court, joined the four liberals in posing skeptical questions to a lawyer defending the law, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and programs. “The question is whether or not the federal government under a federalism system has...