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U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled that the Defense Against Marriage Act (DOMA), is unconstitutional, because the federal government was impermissibly intruding on family law, "a quintessential area of state concern." He wrote that the definition of marriage has long been viewed as a power "reserved to the states" by the 10th Amendment because it is "not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States."
As a Christian Libertarian, I firmly believe that marriage should be protected, but either we live under the rule of law and the limits to federal powers as described in the Constitution of the United States are the law of the land, or we believe that the federal government has no limits and can do whatever it chooses. We live in a Federal Republic which has few and limited powers. As much as I agree with the ideas and principles of the DOMA, to be valid it must be a constitutional amendment. Judge Tauro was correct in ruling that congress does not have that authority.
Using the logic that we have equal protection under the law, again Tauro was correct in ruling the feds must accept each states definition of marriage, not some overarching federal standard. The DOMA act only protected those states that agreed with the federal government, therefore id did not offer equal protection for all States, much less for all people.
Hopefully we'll see more rulings invalidating the huge number of federal laws that are clearly not among the enumerated powers that we the people have granted to the federal government.
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