US District Judge Vanessa Bryant ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional yesterday. Judge Bryant is a Bush appointee. Or as the Tea Party now calls it, a liberal activist judge.
According to Judge Bryant, there is "no conceivable rational basis" for the law.
Judge Vanessa Bryant, a George W. Bush appointee, ruled that the Section 3 of the 1996 law, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, violates equal protection guarantees. The suit, Pedersen et al v. Office of Personnel Management et al, was brought by six couples and one widower in Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont who were denied federal benefits because they were legally married to a spouse of the same sex.
In a striking opinion that exceeded 100 pages, Judge Bryant concluded that, “having considered the purported rational bases proffered by both BLAG and Congress and concluded that such objectives bear no rational relationship to Section 3 of DOMA as a legislative scheme, the Court finds that no conceivable rational basis exists for the provision.
Conservatives jonesing for a swift hearing at the Supreme Court should be careful what they wish for.
I have no doubt the dissenting opinion of Justice Scalia will read like a memo from the American Family Association, but it seems very unlikely to me that the die hard conservatives of the court could eek out a majority to uphold section 3 of the law.
There's simply no logical basis for it. And "ick" is not a legal defense.