June 26 was a day of celebration for all who believe in liberty and equality. The United States Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a core provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibited myriad federal rights and benefits to people in same-sex marriages that are legal in their states. The court also left open the path, taken by California's governor, for disregarding California's mean-spirited Proposition 8 which prohibited same-sex marriage.

In United States v. Windsor, a six-member majority of the Supreme Court held that the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the House of Representatives had standing to defend in court §3 of DOMA, which amends the federal Dictionary Act to define marriage as only a legal union between a man and a woman. The president had directed his attorney general not to defend the statute. Having decided in essence that BLAG had standing to defend the statute, five of those six justices held that §3 of DOMA violates the equal protection of gay people under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. Justice Samuel Alito parted company with those five and would have upheld the statute. The other dissenters were Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia's dissent is unusually vitriolic and ad hominem. Thomas joined Scalia's entire dissent, and the parts of Alito's dissent that addressed the constitutionality of the statute.

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