The Indefensible Defense of Marriage Act

BIGOTRY: –noun, plural -ries. Defined as a stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own.

Let’s be honest, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law on September 21, 1996, is in effect legalized bigotry. It should be over turned.

The DOMA has two aspects: It enforces “state’s rights” not to acknowledge marriages made in other states, where that marriage involves the marriage of same sex couples. It also defines marriage as that made between a man and a woman only. So there are two issues here, state’s rights and homosexual marriage.

My post is not about states rights, but I can’t pass this and not say something on the matter. State’s rights, simply put, is about recognizing each state’s right to make its own laws and to govern itself. On the face of it, that sounds like a great thing; maintaining state individuality, local control, and avoiding big brother and all that. But under the surface, it means that any state can continue to do what it wants, say in the case of homosexual marriage. When it comes to discrimination, I think that’s a bad thing and I think that the end of slavery was a great example of the abuse of state’s rights. I’ll leave it at that.

The issue of the federal government “defining” marriage is just plain spurious. The thinking, hypothetically, goes like this; the tradition is that marriage is between a man and a woman, we like that tradition, we will keep that tradition, we will make it law. Hence the DOMA. For some reason, homosexuals are not afforded the same rights as the rest of humanity, and are not allowed to marry.

Seriously, where did this definition come from, if not from tradition, and religious tradition at that? No where and I mean NO WHERE on this planet is there a definition of marriage except within religious books. Marriage is a religious ceremony for crying out loud. The standard definition of marriage is merely a religious view point, held as a tradition among the people. That’s a problem when we define human rights by tradition and not by the law.

Amendment 1 of the Constitution of the United States says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

Problem 1: The DOMA in effect makes the religious view point of some; the religious definition of marriage, the law of the land.

Problem 2: The DOMA restricts the religious rights of homosexuals to obtain a legally recognized, religious marriage, anywhere in the United States.

There is also another document that speaks to this issue, which seems to have been over looked, the Declaration of Independence, where in is stated, “…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….”

Equality, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is the very core of that upon which this country was founded. Human rights for each and every one of us, except for homosexuals? Apparently, its not so “self evident” any longer.