The Supreme Court overturned laws against interracial marriage. It’s different from Congress, since it interprets the Constitution, and the Constitution — unlike statutory law enacted by Congress — is the supreme law of the land, not subject to the constraints of a vertical separation of powers.

To the extent you’re expecting to receive a full course on American government and jurisprudence in the comments section of a blog, or to the extent you believe you have interesting observations to offer about the historical consistency of United States jurisprudence WITHOUT such basic background knowledge, you’re laboring under something of a misapprehension. And while speaking from a position of ignorance is never praiseworthy, it’s particularly unfortunate when your stream of consciousness (perhaps inadvertently) trivializes the equality of a minority in the process.

In other words, this is not a productive conversation. You need to learn a lot about the United States government before you can expect to opine intelligently on the subject.

I used to write technical documentation as part of my career. One thing I learned early on is that if you want to be understood you should never take the easier way out of using two ambiguous words over a complete, if wordy, explanation. Of course maybe you are less concerned with being understood than trying to appear clever.

I specifically said I was using the word “innovation” in its technical sense – something this is innovative. If you want to assume that I am applying it as a pejorative then you have failed to read my comments properly. As for “constitutional settlement”, perhaps Google is your friend? It’s certainly much easier to just use two words rather than constantly writing “the way over the past 250 years your country has ordered and adapted the relationship between the government of the individual states and the federal authorities”.

Fred,

I think you raise an interesting point. Clearly since DOMA is still on the statute book there is not as yet a majority in Congress to repeal it. I’m interested though by your exploration of the Utah issue. If there was a convention that federal government shouldn’t interfere in the marriage laws of the individual states, surely that convention was first violated by the 1967 Federal Acts outlawing States’ racist miscegenation laws? In that case the Federal Govt acted to overturn the States’ marriage laws as they currently were. While we might argue about the morality or otherwise of such a decision, surely the constitutional convention at that point became that the Federal Govt could overturn State law if it was immoral. Now, how would that work out if Congress believed gay marriage was immoral?

As attractive as your solution is, I suspect it may fall on particularly deaf ears at this time of year.

Like it or not, there is not as yet a majority across the States in favour of the innovation, so rightly the Federal Govt has not as yet recognised it.

Actually, a majority DO support “some form of recognition” for same sex couples. It’s the word “marriage” that has a way to go. Our “innovation” as you put it does indeed have support.

And although the Federal Gov. is supposed to support the people, they do have a right to make moral decisions that are unpopular – such as recognizing the civil equality of all law abiding, tax-paying citizens.