From the Associated Press:
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley says a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman interferes with her state’s right to regulate the institution.
Coakley’s office filed a lawsuit in July challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act. In papers filed late Thursday, Coakley asks a judge to deem the law unconstitutional without holding a trial on the lawsuit.
Coakley argues that regulating marital status has traditionally been left to the states. She also says the federal law treats married heterosexual couples and married same-sex couples differently on Medicaid benefits and burial in veterans’ cemeteries.
Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage and is the first to challenge the law.
The essential question, of course, is this: Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the authority to pass a law defining marriage?
Is it somehow necessary and proper to maintaining post roads? Nope. Is it related to the power to coin Money? Not there either.
Of course, the politicians and the courts would generally claim that this has something to do with the “general welfare” clause or the “interstate commerce clause.” But any honest reading of the original intent and meaning of the Constitution would render such arguments wrong. So wrong that they’re laughable.
The bottom line is this – the federal government has no constitutional authority, whatsoever, to define marriage. That is a social policy – and the federalist advocates of the Constitution promised the People that such policies would be left to the state.
That means that Massachusetts can make marriage legal, and another state can ban it. Or better yet, maybe we should get government out of the marriage business altogether!
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