House targets marriage validation

In a showdown on the role of Congress and the courts in defining marriage, the House voted yesterday to strip federal judges of the ability to rule on such cases, leaving the matter up to the states.

The Marriage Protection Act would prohibit the Supreme Court and other federal courts from deciding challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which says no state could be forced to accept a same-sex “marriage” entered into in another state.

If it passes the Senate and is signed into law, then couples who obtain licenses in Massachusetts, where the state Supreme Judicial Court legalized the practice, could not sue in federal courts for recognition from other states under the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution.

A lesbian couple this week filed the first such challenge in federal court in Florida.

“This bill is a check on judicial power, and the question is whether we should have the elected representatives of the people, in this case Congress today and the state legislatures in the future, determining marriage policy,” said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The bill passed 233-194, with 206 Republicans and 27 Democrats supporting it and 176 Democrats, 17 Republicans and one independent voting against it.

Opponents called the bill a “mean-spirited, unconstitutional, dangerous” election-year distraction.

“The Republicans have decided that if you are gay, you should be able to get along with just two branches of government,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, Massachusetts Democrat.

Republican supporters viewed the fight over the definition of marriage as a fundamental challenge to civilization.

“Traditional marriage is the most stable, enduring, and efficient means of raising children, laying down the roots of community life, and establishing the necessary and sustainable predicates of nationhood,” said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Texas Republican. “This is the evolution of civilization.”

But Democratic opponents, particularly those from Massachusetts, said that state’s experience proves civilization is not in danger.

“The sight of two lesbians falling in love and wanting to formalize that has so traumatized the majority that they are prepared to make the biggest hole in the Constitution that we have seen,” said Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat.

Though the definition of marriage was the basis for yesterday’s fight, in the end it was more a battle over constitutional power and the fundamental division of government.

“Thomas Jefferson wrote that leaving federal courts as the ultimate arbiter of all constitutional questions is, ‘a very dangerous doctrine indeed and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy,’ ” Mr. Sensenbrenner said. “This legislation heeds Jefferson’s wise words.”

Opponents instead pointed to the 1803 Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison, in which the court established itself as the arbiter of constitutionality.

Story Continues →