President Barack Obama garnered international attention when he became the first sitting president to support gay marriage. His announcement came a day after North Carolina voted to amend their state constitution to ban gay marriage and civil unions.
Despite polls that indicate half of Americans support marriage equality, a trend is sweeping the nation. Opponents of gay marriage create ballot initiatives to alter state constitutions, thus indefinitely averting the legalization of gay marriage. Under the guise of “leaving it up to the people,” anti-gay politicians write discrimination into state law with the aid of popular vote.
Conversely, states that vote to legalize gay marriage enter legal limbo because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. DOMA denies married same-sex couples more than 1,138 federal rights, protections and responsibilities automatically granted to married heterosexual couples. In order to ensure equal treatment of gay married couples across the nation, gay marriage must be legalized at the federal level. DOMA must be repealed.
The civil rights of a minority group should never be put up for public vote. As stated by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia, the case that repealed a racial segregation law, marriage is “one of the basic rights of man.” We cannot create a nation of “patchwork” civil rights where a couple’s marriage is considered legitimate in one state and is invalidated in another.
What if, while traveling, a married same-sex couple was injured in a state where their marriage held no validity? Whether the spouse would be able to make decisions regarding medical care or visitation would be left to the discretion of the hospital.
According to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, a group or class that faces discrimination is shielded under constitutional protections that no state or body of voters can override.
This indisputably applies to gays, yet people have placed marriage above the law. Some claim that marriage is a religious rite, which is untrue. Marriage is a means of establishing a legal kinship between two individuals. It transcends culture, race, religion and creed. To exclude an entire class of people from the legal benefits and responsibilities of marriage because we disagree with their lifestyle is unconstitutional. As Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. stated, it is “precisely the kind of animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.”
Several cases have challenged the constitutionality of DOMA, which has been ruled time and again, unconstitutional. One such case comes from New York where a woman was left the family estate by her wife. Although legally married in their state, her inheritance was taxed as if the two women were strangers. This never would have happened to a married heterosexual couple. By law, a spouse can be left unlimited money, or even the family home, without being charged an estate tax.
Legal troubles from the disparity of federal and state laws force married gay couples to pay more than twice what their heterosexual equivalents pay in taxes. They also face stumbling blocks as parents claiming dependents on tax forms.
By denying the existence of a child who is the product of same-sex relationships, we deny the child protection under the law. Because many states do not recognize same-sex parent adoption, the child left behind after the death of a biological parent may be forced into foster care despite having a second parent. Same-sex couples also pay higher health-related taxes. Since their marriages are not federally recognized, gay married couples cannot sponsor their spouse for immigration. None of this can be fixed on the state level. It is the federal government’s job to ensure that each class of people is protected under the law.
To force our laws to discriminate against a marginalized group simply because their lifestyle is at odds with our religious views is to govern a theocracy. If we allow our religious prejudices to dictate the laws by which we govern, we must give up the guise of a constitutional democracy at once.
Reach the columnist at cmjacks7@asu.edu. Follow the columnist @JacksonCrista.
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