Re: I wonder about that one as well. - Edit 1
Before modification by Burr at 19/10/2012 01:21:00 AM
As you surely recall, one of the big arguments against state laws allowing gay marriage, and a key motivation behind the DoMA, was that the Full Faith and Credit Clause would force all states to recognize gay marriage if any did. Many state gay marriage laws were explicitly modified in response to those fears, denying out of state couples the ability to drop in for a wedding illegal in their own state then go home and demand recognition their states laws deny. It seems as open and shut as the Equal Protection Clause argument but then, I am not a lawyer.
Well, it's if the SCOTUS decides the rational-basis standard best applies that it is least likely to find the bans unconstitutional. The federal government has a harder time satisfying rational basis than state governments, precisely because state governments don't have to be uniform. So a) the SCOTUS could set a new precedent regarding FF&C, one which allows states to maintain their bans under rational basis, or b) the SCOTUS could strike down Section 3 of DOMA but not Section 2, allowing Section 2 to survive under rational basis. If either of those happens, the bans could stay in place. What we really need is for SCOTUS to rule that laws challenged for discriminating against homosexuals must meet the heightened scrutiny standard; since the bans would almost absolutely certainly be found unconstitutional under heightened scrutiny. It would just be a matter of challenging them, or the SCOTUS going ahead and ruling on it as a related matter
I find it interesting that, on both burden of proof and the Equal Protection Clause, conservatives and liberals take opposing views of the Constitution on gay marriage, but switch places on guns. I can respect both loose and strict construction views of the Constitution, but going back and forth as convenient strikes me as very self serving. If the Constitution requires TX to accept gay marriage licenses issued in CT, surely it requires CT accept gun licenses issued in TX; it cannot require either unless it requires both, because both rest on the same constitutional foundation.
It is very hard to paint "gun owners" as some kind of discrete group that would be discriminated against more than others by gun control laws, even on the level of rational basis. There is no identifiable group that the government would be discriminating against: any person can be a gun owner or not be a gun owner as easily as another. Rational basis easily takes care of gun control laws. And heightened security? Fuggetaboutit. Gun owners are the very opposite of a discriminated-against, politically weak group, and gun ownership easily lends itself arguments about differences in ability to contribute to society, positive or negative.