On Oct. 18, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional.
What does that mean, and how does it affect us?
Recently, a woman named Edith Windsor was required by the federal government to pay a whopping estate tax of about $363,000 on her inheritance from her partner.
The government of New York recognized Windsor and her partner of about 42 years as spouses, but the federal government treated them like strangers.
The inheritance would not have incurred an estate tax had the federal government recognized their partnership. The federal government failed to recognize the marriage because of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA.
DOMA was enacted by Congress in 1996.
This act defines marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.”
Windsor took the issue to court, and she won.
More than that, DOMA was declared unconstitutional. This is a great victory for those in favor of gay marriage.
However, I wonder how this act passed in the first place.
To be very clear, I’m not talking about the religious ceremony of marriage that takes place in a church. That’s a different kind of marriage.
I’m talking about the legal designation — think of it as a driver’s license.
In a free society, the state has no business conducting religious ceremonies. As written in the majority opinion of Windsor v. United States, “law is not concerned with holy matrimony.”
As a gay man, I am frequently exposed to vitriol about partaking in the civil institution of marriage.
I pay taxes just like everyone else.
Why should I be denied entry into an institution offered by the state on the basis of my gender, sex or orientation?
The replies often sound something like, “God doesn’t like it, so we shouldn’t allow it.”
The problem I see with this answer is that in a free society, in a secular state, what the god or gods of any group of people want is irrelevant.
That should sound appropriate to most people.
That means we are all free to practice whatever faith we want, or to practice no faith at all, and still be treated equally under the law.
Another argument I’ve heard has to do with ability to give birth.
But why should childbirth have anything to do with marriage? Marriage under the state has to do with the civil union of two persons. Even DOMA lacks any mention of children.
The most heinous argument I’ve heard is that gay marriage will lead to other things like marriage between people and animals. I don’t understand how such a conclusion can be drawn.
How could opening a state institution to all pairs of consenting adults lead to anything like that?
As I see it, there is no good reason to bar gay people from getting married under the law.
For many, it’s simply a problem with the word “marriage.” Maybe the state should offer “civil union” to all, rather than “marriage.”
To be honest, though, I don’t think gay marriage should be the great moral debate of our time.
For anyone who is truly interested in freedom, the greater question we ought to ask is about the role of the state in general.
The state offers us incentives to get married by offering many benefits and privileges.
How often should the state offer incentives to curb the behavior of the nonviolent populace?
The state also offers disincentives, like raising taxes on cigarettes. Should the state engage in such social engineering at all?
Brandon Lee Gagne is an anthropology senior at UF. His column appears on Thursdays. You can contact him via opinions@alligator.org.
