Law professor Noah Feldman argues in a piece for Bloomberg that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the federal Defense Against Marriage Act without declaring same-sex marriage a fundamental constitutional right has left the issue "a total friggin' mess." The result is the limbo in Utah in which a federal judge has declared that state's ban unconstitutional and same-sex nuptials have been proceeding until the Supreme Court stayed the ruling yesterday. Feldman said that the Windsor majority made a mistake by not going to the full marital goalpost. "Striving for gradualism, it gave us confusion," Feldman says. "Right now in Utah, some people are in a marriage limbo. They have married since the district court ruling, and now their unions are recognized by the federal government, too (one presumes) under Windsor. If the state ban is reinstated, what then? They will be unmarried (maybe) under Utah law. Will they be federally unmarried, too? It's not an abstract question, since they might not be able to get married in other states that recognize gay marriage since they aren't residents of those states. In short, we may be facing citizens who are married in no state but are married federally."
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
