Do states have the right to define marriage or not? Two recent federal court decisions struck down laws restricting marriage to one man and one woman, but the two decisions were based on conflicting arguments about who can define marriage.

In July, U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro of Massachusetts struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, arguing that the federal government cannot interfere with the right of individual states to define marriage. Then last week, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of California overturned California’s Proposition 8–which defines marriage as an institution between one man and one woman–as unconstitutional, saying that California’s voters do not have the right to define marriage based on their religious or moral views.

Tauro’s DOMA ruling held that the law violates the Tenth Amendment, which gives states all powers not delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. Writing in the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby notes:

Under DOMA, federal programs do not regard same-sex couples as married — not even in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage is allowed. Tauro held that to be an impermissible intrusion on “a core area of state sovereignty — the ability to define the marital status of its citizens.’’

But Jacoby goes on to show how DOMA actually provides for the Tenth Amendment:

But hold on. The Defense of Marriage Act itself upholds the states’ 10th Amendment right to define marriage as they see fit. Section 2 of DOMA — which is titled “Powers Reserved to the States’’ — explicitly affirms that states that do not recognize same-sex marriage need not defer to the “acts, records, and proceedings’’ of those that do. What could be more states’-rights-minded than that? Plainly, Congress was not only aware of the Tenth Amendment when it passed DOMA, but committed to defending that “core area of state sovereignty’’ of which Tauro is so solicitous.

Tauro’s ruling essentially says that any interference whatsoever from the federal government with the states’ right to define marriage is unconstitutional. But then came along Judge Walker, who held that the states don’t actually have the right to define marriage as they wish. Princeton Professor Robert George writes in the Washington Examiner that the decisions really weren’t about states’ rights at all:

Confusing?  Not if one realizes that the judges in these cases had a common purpose and theme.  Their aim was to redefine marriage and label those who hold to the historic understanding of marriage—whether they be the 7 million California voters who approved Proposition 8 or the 427 members of Congress who approved the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996—as “irrational” bigots.

George notes that both decisions ultimately rested on the notion that religious and moral beliefs are an “irrational basis” on which to make a determination about what defines marriage. Walker’s decision striking down Prop 8 includes a “finding of fact” that religious teachings against homosexuality harm homosexuals. George writes:

The religions Walker cites with such animus are precisely those whose doctrines of sin are inextricably tied with doctrines of forgiveness and redemption.

They are also religions that teach, as doctrine, that every individual is made in the image and likeness of God and that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”  They demand of the believer not only a hatred of the sin, but a sincere and ungrudging love for the sinner.