Obama endorses gay marriage

[SamuelRSmith]

badgenome said:

Kasz216 said:

It's funny too... if only because i'd say gay marriage is very much the epitomy of something that is federal jurisdiction.

Mostly because marriage has MANY federal rights.

Maybe you could argue that states can decide whether or not to recognize gay marriages as  far as individual state benefits go... but due to the federal measures, "Federal Marriage" is COMPLETELY a federal issue.

Yeah, I'd think so. What about social security benefits for spouses? Are gay couples only eligible if their state recognizes their union as a "marriage"? How is that fair? Seems like this would be very much the jursidiction of the feds.

Marriage discrimination laws were found unconstitutional in Loving V Virginia. That was related to race discrimination, but the language of the ruling seemed very clear:

"Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival.... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State."

If the President was serious about this, they could easily take, say, North Carolina to court and basically end this for once and for all.