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Full-Text Articles in Law
Deboer V. Snyder: A Case Study In Litigation And Social Reform, Wyatt Fore
Deboer V. Snyder: A Case Study In Litigation And Social Reform, Wyatt Fore
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
On April 28, 2015, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for four cases from the Sixth Circuit addressing the constitutionality of state bans on same-sex marriage. This Note examines DeBoer v. Snyder, the Michigan marriage case, with the goal of providing litigators and scholars the proper context for our current historical moment in which (1) the legal status of LGBT people; and (2) the conventional wisdom about the role of impact litigation in social reform movements are rapidly evolving.
Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan
Doma: An Unconstitutional Establishment Of Fundamentalist Christianity, James M. Donovan
Michigan Journal of Gender & Law
According to the text of the Act, DOMA's purposes are "to define and protect the institution of marriage," where marriage is defined to exclude same-sex partners. To be constitutionally valid under the Establishment Clause, this notion that heterosexual marriages require "protection" from gay and lesbian persons must spring from a secular and not religious source. This Article posits that DOMA has crossed this forbidden line between the secular and the religious. DOMA, motivated and supported by fundamentalist Christian ideology, and lacking any genuine secular goals or justifications, betrays the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution.