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U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) 2014 has started with a bang... a few days before the end of last year, an activist federal judge in Utah issued a ludicrous decision striking down that state's constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. He did this despite the Supreme Court ruling last summer (in the  Windsor  case) that clearly upheld a state's right to define and regulate marriage. He also ignored past legal precedent from the Supreme Court defending the legality of state constitutional marriage amendments. Rather than rely on precedent, he engaged in rampant speculation that eventually the U. S. Supreme Court would agree with him to make marriage genderless. Talk about imposing a personal viewpoint contrary to law! Well, in the first few weeks of new year, another activist federal judge in Oklahoma has done the same thing — throwing out Oklahoma's constitutional amendment defending marriage! Th

August 19, 2013 ( The Public Discourse ) - In a recent conversation with a dozen well-educated young social conservatives, I found that hardly any held to what ten years ago would have been considered the conservative position on marriage. A few had accepted the idea that marriage was a social construction that a majority could change. Others opted for the view that it was a religious institution, and political outcomes on the subject didn’t really matter. Still others thought that there were just other, more winnable, battles worth fighting. The most common sentiment: even though none thought a same-sex relationship was a marriage, almost none wanted to play for a losing team whose objective was a national stranglehold on people’s happiness. Common sense has apparently changed a lot in only a few years. When the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was passed in 1996, the overwhelming majority considered it common sense to protect such a fundamental institution as marriage. By the

How did the Defense of Marriage Act end up at the Supreme Court ? It’s because of , an 83-year-old widow and the plaintiff in United States v. Windsor . When Speyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor, who got hit with a $360,000 tax bill. Because of DOMA’s definition of marriage as “a legal union between one man and one woman,” federal tax benefits that shield married couples from the estate tax didn’t apply. This is a taxation issue, not a marriage issue. Just as I feel that those on the right who believe that “marriage equality” is small government are incorrect , I also feel that those who invite government into marriage to “protect” marriage are committing the same big government fallacy. You should be taxed less regardless of whether you’re married, in a civil union , or just taxed less, period. Really this simply underscores how those in the gay community should join the conservative push for lower taxation. Related articles DOMA and Christianity (ecumenica