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The gay-marriage debate hit a major milestone today. A federal appeals court has declared the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. The groundbreaking ruling will no doubt end up before the Supreme Court.
Interestingly, the three judge panel was comprised of two Republican appointees. The unanimous decision was made at least partly on federalist, states' rights grounds.
"One virtue of federalism is that it permits this diversity of governance based on local choice, but this applies as well to the states that have chosen to legalize same-sex marriage," Judge Michael Boudin wrote for the court. "Under current Supreme Court authority, Congress' denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts has not been adequately supported by any permissible federal interest."
Now, there's a dark and a light side to federalism. States' rights—and really, we should put "rights" in quotation marks here—have been an excuse for plenty of atrocities, including slavery and segregation. The states in question are home to plenty of their own tyrannies, great and small.
On the other hand, right now a handful of states have stood in defiance of bad federal laws, including DOMA and the federal ban on medical marijuana. When gay couples married in Massachussettes are denied federal healthcare benefits, or when federal agents take down marijuana dispensaries in California, it's hard not to sympathize with a little federalism. It's a facet of our democracy that has, like democracy itself, been used for good and ill.
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