Justice
defends defence of Marriage Act
Adrian
Sainz
MIAMI
-- The U.S. Justice Department asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit challenging
an 8-year-old law banning gay marriage, making it the federal government's
first direct legal defence of the Defence of Marriage Act.
Attorney General
John Ashcroft is fighting a lawsuit filed by four same-sex couples who
argue the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. The law
defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and lets states
refuse to recognise gay marriages from other states.
Justice Department
spokesman Charles Miller said it was the federal government's first
direct legal defence of the Defence of Marriage Act.
The issue of gay
marriages has become a theme of the presidential race, with President
Bush calling for a ban of same-sex marriages in a constitutional amendment,
which Democratic challenger John Kerry opposes.
Kerry also opposes
gay marriage, but defends a gay couple's rights to the same legal protections
as those conferred in marriage.
The Justice Department's
motion to dismiss, filed in Miami district court, argues that the couples
have no constitutional standing to challenge the federal law because
they are not married in any state and the law wasn't being applied to
them. The law is consistent with due process and equal protection provisions
of the constitution, the motion said.
"As far as
the federal defendant is aware, every court to address this question
-- including the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit -- has rejected
federal constitutional challenges," the motion said.
The motion also
said that the nation's high court has "defined the right to marry
consistent with traditional understandings."
The author is
an Associated Press Writer
Source: The St. Augustine Record
