The Other Shoe Dropped in Ohio

It didn't take long.  In U.S. v. Windsor, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that portion of the Defense of Marriage Act that defines marriage for federal purposes.  Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, strained to reassure readers of the opinion that the applicability of the ruling was limited to the federal government and had no impact upon the ability of the States to define marriage.

Chief Justice Roberts, in his dissenting opinion, wrote:

While I disagree with the result …I think it more important to point out that its analysis leads no further. . . The Court does not have before it, and the logic of its opinion does not decide, the distinct question whether the States…may continue to utilize the traditional definition of marriage.

 Justice Scalia was not so gullible.  In his dissent, he wrote:

In my opinion . . . the view that this Court will take of state prohibition of same-sex marriage is indicated beyond mistaking by today’s opinion . . . As far as this Court is concerned, no one should be fooled; it is just a matter of listening and waiting for the other shoe.

 Addressing Justice Kennedy, Scalia wrote:

It takes real cheek for today’s majority to assure us, as it is going out the door, that a constitutional requirement to give formal recognition to same-sex marriage is not at issue here—when what has preceded that assurance is a lecture on how superior the majority’s moral judgment in favor of same-sex marriage is to the Congress’s hateful moral judgment against it.

In other words, Prophet Scalia was predicting that the Windsor decision would soon be used as a precedent to declare a STATE's definition of marriage unconstitutional.  I thought it would take longer than a month for Scalia to be proven correct, but this week it was reported that a federal judge in Ohio ordered state officials to recognize the marriage of two men that was performed in Maryland.  Citing language from Windsor, the judge declared Ohio's definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman to be a violation of the U. S. Constitution.