Supreme Court Prolongs Gay-Marriage Struggle By Noah Feldman

[xchrom]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-26/supreme-court-prolongs-gay-marriage-struggle.html

“All deliberate speed” -- that was the gradualist coda the U.S. Supreme Court added in 1955 to its second Brown v. Board of Education ruling after it ended school segregation. In striking down the Defense of Marriage Act without establishing a general constitutional right for gay people to marry, the court did the same thing for same-sex marriage that it once did for segregation: declared a principle without putting it fully into practice.

In Brown, the court’s goal of making desegregation palatable failed when Southern whites mounted widespread resistance. Whether the same strategy will work better this time remains to be seen, but it certainly sets the stage for many legal and political battles over gay marriage in the years ahead.

The big principles Justice Anthony Kennedy declared in his U.S. v. Windsor opinion (which was joined by the four Democratic-appointed justices) lived up to the standard he set in the landmark gay-rights cases of Romer v. Evans and Lawrence v. Texas. In short, Kennedy wrote, DOMA was an affront to “the equal dignity of same-sex marriages.”

DOMA was unconstitutional because it was intended to “disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.”

[MNBrewer]

1. Yeah, I'm giving myself a week to relax and celebrate the mortal wounding of DOMA

but after that it's time to get back to work on finishing the job.