Same Sex Marriage heads to the Supremes.

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I will miss that boy.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

You guys are overlooking the main issues.

Regardless of what Fox News says, the Supreme Court won't be deciding whether individual churches will be compelled to celebrate homosexual weddings.

The Court will probably decide that the federal and state governments must recognize homosexual marriages as having the same legal status as heterosexual marriages. The principal implications will be with entitlement and benefit programs. Homosexual marriage partners will have the same entitlement to Social Security survivor benefits, government and military pension survivor benefits, and health insurance benefits, as married heterosexual partners. A homosexual spouse will have the same right to inheritance as a heterosexual spouse. A homosexual couple will be able to file a joint income tax return, as a heterosexual couple does, and take advantage of the same deductions. The result may be a bit of a strain on government budgets.

The churches really don't have a God-damned thing to worry about.

For example, some Mormon churches sanctify polygamous marriages. But, as far as the Government is concerned, only one wife has any legal status, only one wife's name may appear on a joint tax return, and only one wife would be entitled to any Social Security survivor benefits.

There are a multiplicity of issues, so here's my take on them, individually.

DOMA

The suggestion that marriage is a States' Rights issue doesn't completely dispose of the DOMA issue. While it would certainly suggestion that DOMA is an unconstitutional intrusion into State jurisdiction where states had permitted the celebration of same-sex marriages, that would still leave open the question of, for example, a person married in a jurisdiction in which same sex marriage was legal, but who subsequently moved to and died in a jurisdiction in which it was not legal. Would inheritance tax then apply to the surviving spouse?

It seems to me that the only way to resolve that conundrum is to involve "full faith and credit," and determine that a marriage celebrated in one state must be recognized by the civil authorities of all states, and of the federal government as a marriage.

State constitutional prohibitions

While the Court could certainly pronounce that marriage is exclusively within the jurisdiction of individual states--that still leaves open the question of whether states' attempts to ban same-sex marriage are compliant with the Fourteenth Amendment; and whether states attempts to prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages celebrated in other states are compliant with "full faith and credit."

I am reasonably confident that the genie is out of the bottle on sexual orientation as a trigger for equal protection.

Religious Protections

Inuyasha's misrepresentations to the contrary, no church has ever successfully been sued in an attempt to compel the church to perform a same-sex marriage.

Churches have been sued to permit a same-sex marriage to be performed by another official (not a member of the church's own clergy) in a building owned by the church but not used exclusively as a place of worship. No Catholic priest can be compelled to marry a previously divorced person. No Roman Catholic diocese can be compelled to make a church available for the performance of a non-Catholic wedding ceremony. But if the Knights of Columbus make their hall available for people to have non-Catholic weddings performed, then they can't pick and choose which non-Catholic weddings they will permit.

It's a crucial distinction.

My take on the US Supreme Court is that its members are, above all, pragmatic jurists who will be loathe to permit a patchwork approach that so clearly touches on guarantees provided in the US Constitution. If I am right in that, then I suspect that there is only one possible result, and the only question will then be on the legal reasoning that is used to arrive there.

Waiting for Final Scene...

Here is one church where parishioners are suing for their tithes to be refunded

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/06/2 ... an-church/

And, a suit for married homosexual couples to receive spousal medical benefits

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/firs ... Zyr7W52s2H