Wednesday, February 29, 2012

DOMA case to be appealed

The recent DOMA case  was resoundingly decided in the favor of the plaintiff, Karen Golinski, a Californian who sought health benefits for her legal spouse. As the WaPo remarks,

[Judge] White ... looked at DOMA’s legislative history, noting its “expressed animus against gay men and lesbians,” and found no important governmental objective. Congress listed four governmental interests supposedly protected by DOMA and White demolished them point by point.
●“Responsible procreation and child-rearing.” White cited more than 30 years of research that have “overwhelmingly demonstrated that children raised by same-sex parents are as likely to be as emotionally healthy and educationally and socially successful as those raised by opposite-sex parents.”
●“Nuturing the institution of traditional, opposite-sex marriage.” White said “DOMA does nothing to encourage same-sex married individuals to marry members of the opposite sex . . . . Nor does the denial of benefits to same-sex couples do anything to encourage opposite-sex couples to get married.”
“Defending traditional notions of morality.” White was succinct: “Basing legislation on moral disapproval of same-sex couples does not pass any level of scrutiny.”
“Preserving scarce government resources.” There is “no evidence,” White wrote, “to demonstrate that the provision of federal benefits to same-sex married couples would adversely affect the government fisc. In addition, the preservation of government resources cannot, as a matter of law, justify barring some arbitrarily chosen group from a government program.”
So,  predictably, the "Bipartisan" (not) legislative group BLAG--really, the Congressional Republicans-- will be spending your taxdollars to appeal this ruling.  It will be interesting to see how they will try to argue with Judge White's findings.

And still my marriage, like Karen Golinski's, remains unrecognized.


1 comment:

JCF said...

What a beautifully succinct ruling.