Accidental Blogger

From CNN:

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders — the same Boston-based
group that successfully argued in 2003 for same-sex marriage rights in
Massachusetts — filed the lawsuit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in
Boston on behalf of six couples and three men whose husbands have died.

The suit contends the federal Defense of Marriage Act denies them
protections and benefits that heterosexual couples receive, including
health insurance for federal employees, the ability to file as "married
filing jointly" on federal income taxes and Social Security spousal
protections.

* * *

GLAD's suit addresses only Section 3 of the law, a
portion that prevents the federal government from giving Social
Security and other protections to same-sex married couples.

Should they have waited, giving Obama time to fill up the federal courts with a few more moderates?  Will this suit win?  I don't know.  But I'm oddly exited about this.  I think DOMA, on these facts, is plainly unconstitutional — the provisions refusing federal benefits to same-sex married (or civil unioned) couples pretty clearly reflects nothing more than a "bare desire to harm a politically unpopular group," as they say.  Recently a couple of well-known judges on the Ninth Circuit, including conservative Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, have suggested that DOMA is unconstitutional in this respect.  

One thing the plaintiffs are clearly doing right is limiting the claim.  A challenge to the "no recognition of gay marriages as marriages" portion would surely fail.  That would probably make it harder in the future to overrule that precedent; it would also endanger the rest of the litigation, and cause a greater political frenzy.

And while we're on the topic, I'd just like to mention that Bill Clinton signed DOMA in 1996.  It's one of the most rotten things he did as President, and the Act does far much more than merely allow states to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in Massachusetts or Connecticut (or at the time, Hawaii), no matter how much he attempts to spin it that way.  As we have noted from time to time at this blog, the Clinton years are far from perfect, no matter how they seem in relation to the (worst of all time?) Bush II years.