Marriage
in the Court;
DOMA's Destiny
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On the day that
the first same sex marriage in America took place, in
Massachusetts, ten thousand traditional families
spontaneously divorced in Nebraska; rugged heterosexual
men suddenly found themselves craving cocktails with
their chest bump buddies; churches collapsed; tornados
tore through the Heartland; and the foundations of
America's righteous religious institutions crumbled.
None of that happened; but you'd think it did from all
of the holier-than-thou howling from hate mongers of the
cloth. Never doubt the doubt of ignorance.
Explorers, rugged
individualists, and those seeking religious freedom came
to this wild untamed continent looking for wealth and
elbow room. Just under three hundred years after
the first Europeans landed, our nation was formed and
the first thing the founders did was start making laws,
right after signing the Constitution.
Our Constitution
specifically prohibits our lawmakers from making laws
that discriminate against any group of Americans.
But, why let a little thing like that stand in the way
of the right of ignorance, or false righteous
indignation against those who are different, or
of domination and discrimination. The Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA) was a law enacted in Congress in the
mid 1990s to prohibit same sex marriage by limiting
federal recognition of marriage to opposite sex couples
and releasing states from the obligation to recognize
same sex marriages from other states. Only now,
over a decade and a half later, will the Supreme Court
of the United States decide if that law is
unconstitutional.
It seems so
obvious that this law is a violation of one of the most
basic principals in the Constitution, further refined
following the Civil War; but nothing is so
simple in this land of the free. Our impartial
court is made up of people selected for their political
partiality. I could go on about that; but it would
just be playing with words. The case the court
decided to consider involves a New York woman in her
eighties who was together with the woman she loved for
decades; they married in Canada earlier this century.
They did well in their lives and she inherited a
considerable sum; and she had to pay hundreds of
thousands of dollars in federal tax that a heterosexual
widow would not. It does not take a brain surgeon
to realize how wrong that is. But, it took a
Congress of mean spirited people making financial and
moral excuses to create this imposition of religious
exclusion on civil law. That too clearly violates
the Constitution.
The final decision
won't happen until this summer, possibly during Pride
month. What will happen has already been
speculated about ad infinitum by pundits; we can only
hope for fairness.
The question here
is, why is this decision on DOMA's unconstitutionality
important to gay service in our nation's armed forces?
Now that gay people can serve openly in pride, we should
be entitled to the exact same benefits that all service
members earn. But, we aren't. Due to DOMA,
the Pentagon is forbidden from recognizing the marriages
and unions of our brother's and sisters serving our
nation. Family benefits are denied. A
soldier shot in Afghanistan is medivaced to the American
Army Medical Center in Landsthul Germany. If he's
a married heterosexual, his spouse will be flown to be
at his side there. If he or she is gay, the spouse
is not entitled to this military benefit. Nor are
they allowed to live in on-base housing. The list
goes on and on and also applies to veterans and their
families. Why should our most honored citizens,
who have volunteered to put themselves in harms way in
our armed forces, be subjected to this discrimination?
If you ask
opponents of our rights and freedom about these
benefits; they will cite saving money in the military
budget, biblical verses, and all sorts of other
irrelevant reasons for dividing our service members into
two unequal categories. Its simply based upon
unconstitutional prejudice, nothing else.
If I'm good enough
to take a bullet for my country; I'm good enough to be
treated like all my fellow patriots.
Denny Meyer, Gay
Veteran, fmr SFC USAR
© 2013 Gay Military Signal