Are We Defending the Indefensible?: The Death of DOMA and Proposition 8

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"Ding-Dong, DOMA's dead!" trumpeted one of my friends on Facebook at the news that the U.S. Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional a major part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Another facebook friend posted this picture of the rainbow-hued Supreme Court in celebration of today's two decisions that sounded death knells for proponents of traditional marriage.

The DOMA decision (U.S. v. Windsor) concerned the right of the federal government to define marriage as between one man and one woman for the purposes of receiving benefits under federal law. The Supreme Court held that the definition of marriage should be left up to the states. The second decision (Hollingsworth v. Perry) focused on a California state ballot initiative known as Proposition 8.  Through Proposition 8, Californians had voted to amend their state constitution to declare that marriage should be between one man and one woman. The district court declared Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court, based on technical grounds, refused to revisit the lower court's decision.

What jumps out most in both cases is the refusal of the executive branch to defend the validly-enacted laws.

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