The Supreme Court prepares to screw up gay marriage . . .

Everybody has a right to get married.  Nobody has the right to marry whoever or whatever they choose.  You can't marry somebody who doesn't want to marry you back.  You can't marry somebody who is only six years old. You can't marry somebody who is already married to somebody else.  You can't marry more than one at a time.  You can't marry your pet St. Bernard bitch, no matter how comely she may be.  You can't marry a unicorn.

The gummint gives specific legal rights to people who marry according to the gummint's specific marital prescriptions, like rights to consent, rights to pass on property, tax distinctions, etc.  Rights are legal conditions created by government.  Not all rights belong to everybody. If so-called rights to marry are extended beyond the boundaries of the specific marital prescriptions, they cease to be rights.  They become property.

 

The problem isn't that gay people are denied rights available to married, straight people. The problem is that special privilege has been granted to married people. Why should marriage, a public confession to strictly private behavior, be given any special privilege at all?

 Want more rights for gay people?  Consider that at the state level, citizens vote on issues of rights all the time, while also voting for representative candidates.  There are even referendum privileges where citizens can propose changes to laws granting or reducing rights.  But at the federal level, citizens only vote for representative or executive candidates, never issues.  We are stuck with the fact that Congress and the Executive can and will act only as they damn well please. 

 

But at the state level, we get to vote.  That's a hint that the right to marry is a state issue, not a federal issue.  Some states permit gay marriages; some don't

 The issue of marriage only seems to be of federal concern when it arises between the states, as when state A permits a couple to marry, where they would not have been permitted to marry in state B.  We've always relied on the theory of full faith and credit to resolve these matters, and that's why somebody came up with the cockamamie Defense of Marriage Act.  At the federal level!  Thereby putting the federal government and some state governments at odds, and creating a 10th amendment quandary to be ignored by the buttheads of the right who didn't like getting outvoted.

I don't see marriage as one of the enumerated powers of the U.S. Constitution and it sure as hell isn't covered under the interstate commerce dodge, where butthead progressive types seem to find justification for most of their pet notions. 

 So it seems to me that the DOMA is the problem and could be dumped for unconstitutionality. 

 

What to do if you are gay, in a committed, loving relationship, and your state of residence is not one of the states permitting gay marriage?  Move to a more congenial state, and marry, butthead.  (I suggest that anybody contemplating marriage, straight, gay, or just bent a little funny, should take a look at divorce law while looking at marriage law.) 

Thus Walt hath spoken, fully anticipating the Supreme Court to pay no attention whatsoever to the words of Walt.