The Supreme Court said that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act is not Constitutional. It also held that the proponents of Proposition 8 did not have merits, which means they tossed the appeal and Prop 8 along with it.
A spokesman for gay marriage advocates said after the decision was handed down that this ruling effectively legalizes gay marriage throughout the United States. What it does by essentially remanding Prop 8 is let a California court ruling legalizing gay marriage stand. In the case of DOMA, it tosses the question of how to define marriage back to the states.
In actual practice, there are big unanswered questions about how the federal government and its many interventions into state government will be affected by this ruling. It think it will call a lot of things into question as they pertain to married couples and children in the various states.
It is no exaggeration to say that this a landmark ruling. I need time to read the decisions and think it through before I say more.
For that reason, I am going to hold off analysis for a while.
Feel free to comment below, but do it in a way that does not attack other people.
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