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All of a sudden the Tenth Amendment is now our friend...

... when the State of Massachusetts uses it to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act:

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (pictured) filed a 32-page lawsuit Wednesday against the U.S. government, seeking federal marriage benefits for 16,000 legally-wed gay and lesbian couples. At issue is the constitutionality of Section 3 the Defense of Marriage Act, recently notoriously defended by the Department of Justice.

The suit states that DOMA, termed "overreaching and discriminatory," interferes with the state's "sovereign authority to define and regulate marriage."

"We view all married persons equally," Coakley said at a press conference today.

The basis for the suit is the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Section 8 of the Constitution. Along with the United States itself, defendants include the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Veterans' Affairs.


But when the issue is Montana challenging Federal firearms regulations or Dave Burris posting on States using the 10th to combat Federal power grabs, the Tenth Amendment is a vehicle for promoting political violence--at least according to some of our local commentators.

So for the sake of intellectual consistency, I suppose that jason should now denounce the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for appealing to the Bill of Rights to limit Federal instrusions on the ability of the States to define and regulate marriage.

Oh. Oops. I just used the words jason and intellectual in the same sentence.

Sorry.

At any rate: good luck to Massachusetts. Given the fact that President Obama's Justice Department felt compelled to compare same-sex marriage to incest and to go to court to claim that DOMA doesn't infringe on anybody's civil rights, there's not likely to be much sympathy for you in the White House.
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Comments

tom said…
And while we're on the topic of the 10th Amendment, why are State Senator Bushweller and Reps Mitchell, Carson, Hudson, Lavelle & Ramone trying to collaborate with the Feds on the REAL ID Act when we should be doing something like this instead?
July 9, 2009 at 3:14 AM
Hube said…
Oh. Oops. I just used the words jason and intellectual in the same sentence.

Your biggest faux pas to date, Steve! ;-)
July 9, 2009 at 11:28 AM
tom said…
I so wish I'd been paying attention back in April when the fool calling itself "REGULATE" in this comment removed all doubt by plucking a single word out of its literal and historical context and spewing nonsense about its "meaning".
July 9, 2009 at 2:26 PM
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