Rachel Maddow On Gay Marriage Ruling: It's Freaking Utah

 

On her MSNBC show Friday, Rachel Maddow opined that a federal ruling striking down Utah's gay marriage ban “feels different.”

U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby surprised everyone by handing down his ruling more than 2 weeks before his January 7 self-imposed deadline.

Shelby said that Amendment 3, the state's 2004 voter-approved constitutional amendment which limits marriage to heterosexual unions, violates the 14^th Amendment.

“Does this Utah decision today just feel like it's a bigger deal than all the others because, forgive me, it's freaking Utah!” Maddow rhetorically asked her views.

Maddow's guest, Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at New York University, agreed that the case had the possibility of drastically altering the marriage equality landscape in the United States.

“Same-sex marriage advocates never thought that they would get Utah in the next decade,” Yoshino said. “To have it happen today is extraordinary.”

“The big deal about this case is that they've used the nuclear option, A, and said, 'We're gonna bring a federal constitutional challenge to this,'” he added. “But also, 'We're gonna use Windsor, we're gonna use that Windsor case.'”

Windsor is the Supreme Court case that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which led to federal recognition of the legal marriages of gay couples. It is being cited in legal challenges to similar bans throughout the country.