WHERE WERE THE REPUBLICANS?

At the Senate hearings yesterday on whether the Defense of Marriage Act is in trouble and a Federal Marriage Amendment is necessary, no fewer than two – count them – two Republican senators bothered to show up. Five Democrats did. One Republican stayed for only a few minutes. I think we may have seen exactly what’s going on here. No serious legal scholar thinks that one state can impose marriage rights on another, under current law. Despite disingenuous attempts to claim otherwise, the Full Faith and Credit Clause has never applied to marriages and still doesn’t. DOMA makes sure that federal marriage rights are exclusively heterosexual. This entire FMA charade is entirely designed as theater for the fundamentalist base of the GOP. It seems even the Senate leadership can’t take it seriously. I’m grateful, of course. But if I were one of the fundamentalists trying to amend the U.S. Constitution, I’d be more than a little perturbed.