  urlLink House Bill Strips Federal Courts of Power Over Same-Sex Cases I have many things to say about Same-Sex Marriage. There are a lot of arguments made and a lot of legal wrangling to do. So right now I'm going to try to focus on the attacks conservatives are making on our court system. The House just passed a bill that would strip the federal court's jurisdiction on gay marriage issues. I'm not totally sure how this is would work. According to this urlLink Find Law Article : If the MPA were to become law, the federal courts would be divested of the powers to hear two kinds of "federal question" cases: Cases relating to the MPA itself, and certain cases relating to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). It seems to me that the Supreme Court would easily overturn the Act if it were brought to them. I'm having trouble imagining that the Federal Courts would allow themselves to be bound by such a law.
The entire point of the Supreme Court is to rule on the constitutionality of cases brought before it. How could Congress limit what they rule on? The DOMA is iffy on a constitutional level at best so I can understand conservatives trying to pull this sort of thing now. They must figure that proposing acts that are at base simply a political statement and not a serious law will be enough to energize their base. The DOMA passed as a meaningless statement. There were no pro-gay marriage rulings at the time of it's passing. In fact, I'm guessing that the Gay Marriage issue became more mainstream after it's passing. Social conservatives must figure that they can fight for this act as well without fear of doing real damage to our court system.
And real damage they would do. If the courts actually let this sort of thing pass, where would it stop? Why not pass all kinds of laws banning anything you please and then pass laws that prevent them from getting stuck down? It could easily work against conservatives as well as liberals. Congress could easily pass laws concerning interstate trade. Say, banning shipping anti-abortion pamphlets across state lines. Then they could pass a law saying that you couldn't challenge that law in court.
They could do it with gun control as well. There wouldn't be any limits on what you could ban the courts from ruling about. The Supreme Court is mostly conservative these days. They wouldn't want to limit their ability to get precedent set for the things they want any more that liberals do. Laws can change on a whim, but court rulings have a lasting affect on legal and political debate.
They wouldn't want to limit that affect any more than liberals do. It's absolutely ridiculous to think that any serious lawmaker would try to get this passed. The people pushing these things through the House are political attack dogs with no respect for our system of government or the rule of law. They're trying slick legal tactics to score political points and it is detrimental to the political process. When our political leaders start rallying around laws like this it sullies the reputation of Congress as a whole. These law makers are not here to serve the public so much as they're here to gain power and keep power. They should be ashamed of themselves. 
