“Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer talks with Richard Socarides, former senior adviser to President Clinton, and Akhil Reed Amar, a professor of law and political science at Yale University, about the two same-sex marriage cases the Supreme Court announced it will take up. The first challenges the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, which bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages; the second seeks to overturn Proposition 8, a 2008 ballot initiative that outlawed same-sex marriage in California after the courts there had legalized it.
“I think that [the Supreme Court] would not have taken both these cases if there wasn’t at least some support on the court for a historic decision,” Socarides says.
“If we actually don’t nationalize gay marriage everywhere this term, the question is going to be, do states that don’t recognize gay marriage — do they have to respect gay marriages that are solemnized … out of state?” Amar asks.
