Yesterday U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman ruled Louisiana’s Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage is legal and other judges went too far when they declared the bans on gay marriage to be unconstitutional. [read_more] Judge Feldman had two reasons for his decision. First the Supreme Court has never ruled that gays are a protected class and second, states have not passed the bans because of any animosity toward gays but because the states have a legitimate interest in defining marriage as between a man and a woman,
When a federal court is obliged to confront a constitutional struggle over what is marriage … the consequence of outcomes, intended or otherwise, seems an equally compelling part of the equation.
And so, inconvenient questions persist. For example, must the states permit or recognise a marriage between an aunt and niece? Aunt and nephew? Brother/brother? Father and child? May minor marry? Must marriage be limited to only two people? What about a transgender spouse? Is such a union same-gender or male-female? All such unions would undeniably be equally committed to love and caring for one another, just like the plaintiffs…..
“So, is there even any rational basis for Louisiana’s resistance to recognize same-sex marriages entered into in other states, or to authorize same-sex marriages in Louisiana? Plaintiffs contend not, and conclude that Louisiana’s laws and Constitution can only be supported by a hateful animus.
“Defendants rejoin that the laws serve a central state interest of linking children to an intact family formed by their biological parents. Of even more consequence, in this Court’s judgment, defendants assert a legitimate state interest in safeguarding that fundamental social change, in this instance, is better cultivated through democratic consensus. This Court agrees.”
“Louisiana’s laws and Constitution are directly related to achieving marriage’s historically preeminent purpose of linking children to their biological parents. Louisiana’s regime pays respect to the democratic process; to vigorous debate. To predictable controversy, of course. The fact that marriage has many differing, even perhaps unproved dimensions, does not render Louisiana’s decision irrational. Nor does the opinion of a set ofsocial scientists (ardently disputed by many others, it should benoted) that other associative forms may be equally stable, or the view that such judgments vilify a group (even though one finds them in a majority of the states, but not in all states). Even the fact that the state’s precepts work to one group’s disadvantage does not mandate that they serve no rational basis. The Court is persuaded that a meaning of what is marriage that has endured in history for thousands of years, and prevails in a majority of states today, is not universally irrational on the constitutional grid.”
