DOMA Threatens to Rip Family Apart

Uncomfortable Questions for the DOMA Defenders.

There are numerous court cases that are investigating the legality of the sort of discriminatory policies which where imposed by the Defense of Marriage Act.  The Republican congress passed a measure to spend millions of taxpayer’s dollars in order to defend this intrusive regulation. They even created a misnamed  Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group to handle defending the undefendable.

 One of the cases winding its way through the coursts is Golinski v. U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The court that will be hearing the case has asked BLAG and attorneys for Golinski to address numerous questions in a hearing scheduled for December 16. These are all good questions and we are reprinting them here, though in shorter format geared for non-legal audiences. These questions get to the heart of DOMA and why it was such a radical assault on the traditional separation of powers between the states and the federal government. I shall be curious to see how the Republicans answer these question and what mental gymnastics will be required for them to justify this unprecedented attack on the federalist principles that apply to marriage laws.

The High Cost of Government-Mandated Discrimination: DOMA and the Regulatory State

Conservatives frequently talk about the cost of regulations. For instance, Freedomworks, a well-known conservative organization, published a piece called The Hidden Cost of Regulation. It said: “Complying with regulations is not cheap,” noting that regulations aren’t paid for by just corporations, but by “the entire economy.” It notes that consumers pay higher prices as well, due to these regulations, and that they “act as a drag on economic growth.”

Allow me to add two other points Freedomworks did not mention, but which I believe they would agree with. 1) Motives of the regulators do not change costs imposed by the regulations. That is, costs are not lower if the motives of regulators are good. 2) Costs are not changed if regulations are imposed by one political party rather than the other. In other words, the cost of Republican-imposed regulations would be just the same if Democrats had been the guilty party.

With this in mind, let us turn to a set of regulations Republicans put into place, with the claimed motive of “protecting the family:” The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

NRA inserts itself in DOMA controversy.

One would expect the National Rifle Association to defend the rights of gun owners and not really concern itself with the rights of others. They are supposed to be a one-issue lobbying group. So, I don’t get worried when they refuse to defend the First Amendment and instead concentrate on the Second Amendment. I’m the sort of guy who likes all of the Bill of Rights, not just selective parts of it. If anything the Bill of Rights didn’t go far enough for me.

But I would not expect the NRA to actively insert itself in campaigns to deny other people their rights. But that is precisely what the NRA has done. That, in my opinions, moves them into a whole different category.

First, some background regarding the situation with the law firm King & Spalding. Unfortunately a lot of conservatives have actively been lying about the facts to twist the case into something far different than what it really is.

Republican leaders in the House of Representatives recently hired King & Spalding. They wanted the firm to defend the odious Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that created a federal definition of marriage for the first time in history. Previously marriage was regulated as the state level. Republicans, in the name of states’ rights, moved the definition to the federal level so that it trumps state definitions on all federal matters.