intertwined with the citizen s day-to-day life, you are at real risk of running in conflict with what has always been thought to be the essence of the state police power, which is to regulate marriage, divorce, custody. as justice kennedy said, 1,100 statutes, and it affects every area of life. and so you are really diminishing what the state has said is marriage. you are saying no, state, there are two kinds of marriages, the full marriage, and then the sort of skim milk marriage. well, afterwards, edith windsor said it went beautifully and that her late spouse, thea spire, would be pleased. today is leak a spectacular for me. a lifetime kind of event. i know the spirit of my late
convictions and execute not only the statute, but do it consistent with his view of the constitution rather than saying, we ll wait until the supreme court tells us we have no choice. some tough words there. does the chief justice have a point. is the white house trying to have it both ways? the white house has approa approached this case in a very careful, one might say political manner. they don t want the to push too far, alienate too many opponents of same sex marriage. they are dumping this problem in the supreme court s lap. chief roberts was not happy about that. the supreme court doesn t want to be seen on the wrong side of history. the indications at least from the prop 8 arguments yesterday, are that a majority of the justices are not eager to deal with the timing of the case. what i don t get is, something to me, isn t it either constitutional or it s not? it s clearly a major issue in
but boy it s not trending a different direction. it s looking like and there s a lot of good studies out there, there s journals dedicated to this, it s incomplete. it hasn t been long enough. the jury is out, but the trend looks positive for same sex couples. was it justice kennedy yesterday who seemed concerned about how the justices seemed to be how the kids are fairing in same sex marriages? yeah, and he said two different things, which is not out of character for justice kennedy. at one point he said, we have these 40,000 kids. aren t they entitled to have parents who are legally recognized by the state? that seemed a very pro same sex marriage comment. today he said, we ve had one kind of marriage for 2000 years and another kind of marriage for 5 or 10 years. how can we know that they are essentially equivalent when it comes to childbearing. same sex marriage is newer than cell phones or the internet. how can we know for sure that
legal status that we give to all the other parents who want to be married in the world. is this key health of the relationship, health of the couple. if kids need one thing, we know they need to feel safe, be sustained over time in a stable environment. if you re creating any instability. that seems rather unstable. there s some uncertainty there. that always goes against kids. it s very hard to argue looking at the trend being very positive, and the what we know about what kids need, it s a hard area to attack. we need the study, there s no doubt. we need more data, but the data is certainly not looking like we re going to see anything glaring. i know it s been a long day for you, jeff. thanks. this is all taking place with public opinion shifting in favor of accepting same sex marriage. the remains bashing on the
trouble. doma is the 1996 federal law define i defining marriage as between a man and a woman. tell that to to an 86-year-old woman who braved the people toll join the fight. she was forced to pay $360,000 in inheritance tax because her marriage was not recognized. if what happened in 1996, and i m going to quote from the house report here, is that congress decided to reflect in honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality. is that what happened in 1996? what gives the federal