Wisconsin Family Connection
Week of July 19, 2010 – #844
Protecting Marriage is Irrational?

Your values are irrational. That’s what U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro said in a ruling handed down on July 8th, declaring the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, unconstitutional. For the purposes of the federal government, DOMA protects and preserves the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

In his atrocious ruling, Judge Tauro said that DOMA has no rational basis. In other words, no rational human being would say that there is a reason to preserve the traditional definition of marriage in federal statute. Tauro’s opinion claims there is no “rational relationship” between protecting marriage and a government objective.

Think about that for a minute. If you believe that there is a very reasonable government objective for protecting the institution of marriage – the driver of the family, the economy, morality and society in general– then according to Judge Tauro, you are not a rational human being!

Tauro’s opinion basically says that the 60-70% of Americans who believe that traditional marriage should be protected are irrational! Really? Then that would include the 1.25 million Wisconsin voters who approved our state Marriage Protection Amendment in November of 2006.

Or maybe, Judge Tauro was being irrational. You see, Tauro actually handed down two rulings, Gill and Massachusetts.  Gill had to do with Massachusetts citizens seeking federal benefits for their same-sex spouses – remember, judicial fiat legalized so-called “same-sex marriage” in Massachusetts in 2003.

The Massachusetts case was brought by the Attorney General of Massachusetts who claimed that the federal definition of marriage forced the state to discriminate against state citizens in “same-sex marriages” or risk losing federal funding for certain programs.

In Gill, Tauro ruled that DOMA violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution based on the “rational basis” test – the lowest test used to determine the constitutionality of a federal statute. That’s where he said that no rational human being would see any reason for the government to protect the institution of marriage.

We could help him out there. We know that the reason government protects marriage is because marriage is the very foundation of society.  Marriage is and always has been an important social and public good.

You loose marriage and you loose the best vehicle for raising the next generation. You loose marriage and you loose the physical, social, emotional and mental benefits associated with marriage for men, women and children – as social science and 2500 years of Western civilization have repeatedly verified.  Quite simply, government protects marriage because marriage is good for society.

In Massachusetts, Tauro ruled that DOMA violates the 10th Amendment, the state’s rights Amendment. He claimed that having a federal definition of marriage, for the purpose of federal government, violated state sovereignty.

So let’s see if we can get this straight. DOMA is unconstitutional because defining marriage is a state right. But states really can’t define marriage as the union of one man and one woman because that would violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution as DOMA supposedly does. Sound contradictory?  That’s because it is!

Many top legal scholars think these rulings are, in the vernacular, completely bogus. In fact, one legal scholar who actually supports same-sex marriage, wrote that Tauro’s rulings are completely inconsistent.

But get this. Guess who was doing the so-called defense of DOMA? President Obama and the Department of Justice. Guess who’s opposed to DOMA? President Obama and the Department of Justice (DOJ)!

Congress submitted four justifications for passing DOMA back in 1996. “1) encouraging responsible procreation and child-bearing, 2) defending and nurturing the institution of traditional heterosexual marriage, 3) defending traditional notions of morality and 4) preserving scarce resources.”

The DOJ rejected those claims when it was supposedly defending DOMA and said instead that DOMA’s purpose was to retain the “status quo.” Elena Kagan and the Solicitor General’s office where in charge of defending this law. That’s the same Kagan Obama has nominated for a lifelong seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

What Obama and Kagan have done is completely disingenuous. It is their sworn duty to uphold the law as passed by Congress, not reject it!  We don’t know yet if they will appeal, but we do know what happens with these cases could threaten our own Marriage Protection Amendment in Wisconsin

This is Julaine Appling for Wisconsin Family Council reminding you the Prophet Hosea said, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”