Usually, I Am A Little Afraid of People Who Scream for States' Rights

There is no getting around the existence of the 10th Amendment.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

There can be no question that since this was first written and adopted as the last part of the Bill of Rights, our country, and our state and federal governments, have changed a lot. The additional amendments to the US Constitution have certainly help to expand the authority of the federal government, but mostly, this expansion has been about taking steps to protect individuals, especially minorities. So, when I hear people scream for "states' rights," what I hear is a rally for more discrimination, oppression, and theocracy. Sorry, states-righters, but that is what history has taught me.

Whenever the states and the feds are on opposite sides, it usually means some state has made some redneck decision to deny rights to a minority or impose some religious theology on people. Segregation in all its forms, the "papers please" law in Arizona, and requiring creationism to be taught in science classes (Kansas) in public schools are just a few boneheaded examples of states run amok. In some of these examples, the federal government has intervened (or is intervening now) to keep the craziness in check.

But here's an exception: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently challenged the Federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA")(Passed under Bush and a GOP congress) (which defines marriage as only being between a man and a woman) as violating the Tenth Amendment. Since the authority to issue marriage licenses and define marriage is not granted to the federal government, the federal court in Massachusetts ruled the law unconstitutional, violating the 10th Amendment.

DOMA was passed as a culmination to the anti-gay-marriage wave that got Bush elected in 2004, in order to avoid paying spousal benefits and entitlements to gay married couples. The Court's ruling means that if a state issues a marriage certificate to any couple, whether opposite sex or same sex, the federal government has to treat the couple as married for purposes of all federal benefits and entitlements, since states and only states have the power to define marriage. Judge Joseph Tauro wrote in his decision, "Congress undertook this classification for the one purpose that lies entirely outside of legislative bounds, to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves. And such a classification the Constitution clearly will not permit."

It is ironic that a lot of states righters are also opposed to gay marriage, yet the 10th Amendment, their amendment, was used to expand federal rights to gay married couples. Isn't it ironic? Don'tcha think?