The Supreme Court killed DOMA today, and as expected the conservative block led by Antonin Scalia railed in its dissent at the injustice of it all. In a truly twisted turn of logic, Scalia claimed that those who were completely unaffected by the law are the real victims. It is revealing that his hissy fit from the bench made only an emotional dissent to an outcome he could not win through logic. That's the problem with conservatism these days. Unable to justify its point of view through anything in the way of an ideological truth, it panders strictly to emotions. The bigotry enshrined in DOMA was overtly discriminatory against a whole class of people. And yet, year after year after year conservatives denied it was so while continually failing to elucidate a logical argument in its favor. It was just so much emotion and fear. DOMA was good because they said so.
Bigotry is looking at someone and seeing something intrinsic about them that you don't like, be it their manner, their skin color, who they associate with, or any other thing you can't put your finger on, but use to rationalize a hatred of them. When this hatred is recognized by others, it becomes discrimination. When it is enshrined in law, as in DOMA, it is unconstitutional. Persons who insists that only their values are the correct order for the world fall easily into emotional thinking. They quickly discard the logic and rule of law. Under such circumstances, they will never come to a rational point of view about their own self interest, let alone others.
DOMA was born out of fear that the state of Hawaii would pass the first same sex equality law. In a way that was a big favor. It focused the fight. Congress would never have passed a law guaranteeing marriage equality on its own. It was only by doing the opposite that equal rights could eventually be claimed. The clear assertion by the Supreme Court that DOMA, or anything like it is a violation of the constitution could only have happened if the law existed to begin with. It will be interesting to see how the fight plays out in the thirty states that have marriage discrimination laws. It's not looking good for them.
