A Huge Step Forward

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U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro ruled today in Boston in favor of gay couples' rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. His ruling declares DOMA unconstitutional because it interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and is a violation of the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Tauro wrote, "Congress undertook this classification, (DOMA), for the one purpose that lies entirely outside of legislative bounds, to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves. And such a classification the Constitution clearly will not permit." Tauro's ruling today only applies to Massachusetts, where gay marriage has been legal since 2004, but if his ruling is upheld on appeal, then it will certainly have wide-reaching, national implications.
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Judge Tauro, a U.S. Army veteran and married heterosexual with children and grandchildren, was appointed to the federal bench in 1972 by a Republican president, Richard Nixon. His personal resume will certainly make it harder for the extreme right wing to claim that is opinion is invalid because he's a far-left, "activist" judge, but get ready, because they will surely make that claim. The homophobic right wing's narrow view of society is crumbling before their eyes, and believe us, this latest ruling will only cause more panic in their camp. Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, called Tauro's ruling "judicial activism" and said Tauro was a "rogue judge". Gay marriage advocates will keep pushing their agenda in the courts, she said, but noted voters often reject gay marriage at the ballot box, including in a recent California vote. What we need to remind Lafferty is that if social progress was left solely in the hands of the voting public, slavery would have continued well past 1865, the rights of women and Native Americans to vote would have come decades later than when those rights were granted, and we might not still, to this day, have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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But irregardless of national homophobic panic, from our point of view, Judge Tauro's ruling today is a fantastic achievement, but one that was not unexpected. We all know that discrimination of any kind is wrong, and that sooner or later, society recognizes that fact and attempts to make amends. Complete and total equal rights for the gay community won't come overnight, but those rights will eventually come, and this ruling today is a major step toward that day.