Secular argument for keeping DOMA

[revolutionist90]

Hey ya'll,

one of my professors at school wrote this piece. It delves into the legality of keeping DOMA. I know we should be careful with secular arguments but this one seems good. It is a secular argument that uses the constitution as a defense. The professor teaches Law and jurisprudence. The two pieces are lengthy but worth a read. They really do delve into the states power in determining the acceptance of gay marriage. One pieces also calls to question the validity of "sexual orientation" and if it should be a special notion.

"To take an old phrase, "I knew" the Defense of Marriage Act; I was "present at the creation." We were not trying to take over the laws on marriage in the States; we were trying to preserve the authority of the States to make their own decisions on whether to sustain marriage as we've known it, or whether to make accommodations for couples of the same sex."

http://www.right-reason.org/publications/pubid.824/pub_detail.asp

There was nothing new in these arguments, and the sobering thing was just how many of the fallacies here have hung on over these years. The most virulent and intractable has been this foggy notion of "sexual orientation." Justice Sotomayor confronted Chuck Cooper with the challenge of whether any discrimination based on "sexual orientation" could possibly be legitimate. The next question would of course involve the denial marriage on account of the"sexual orientation" of the couple. Cooper did not contest her; he admitted to conceiving no such instance. But there he missed a critical moment for exposing—and destroying—a powerful cliché. Could it really be that, among everything in this world, sex is the only activity that can produce no harms and properly draw no moral judgments? If a man applied to be an adoptive father, could we not draw adverse inferences about him if he admitted that he was deeply committed to sado-masochistic sex, to pedophilia or even zoophilia (sex with animals)?

But then to make matters worse, Ted Olson, in responding to challenges from the bench, remarked that "sexual orientation is a characteristic of individuals that they cannot control." Really? Pedophilia, sado-masochism, and all of the others? If he simply meant "homosexual orientation," there has been no evidence, even yet, for the gay gene. But if Olson had read some of the briefs on the other side, he should have seen the briefs written by Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University, or Daniel Robinson, of Oxford, showing that there is no clear, stable definition of a gay or lesbian. Many people move in and out of different sexual styles and "orientations," across a spectrum that may include transvestites, zoophiliacs, and fetishists of various descriptions. The term has become so elastic, as one commentator remarked, that "there is real doubt whether sexual orientation is a valid concept at all."

http://www.right-reason.org/publications/pubid.822/pub_detail.asp