blog jargon in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture today the supreme court heard arguments regarding proposition eight in the defense of marriage act could it be game over for gay marriage opponents also a meatball thief could face the same punishment as a rapist in the american criminal justice system too harsh lesser guesses and it's politics panel and the hunger games is not a futuristic post apocalyptic fantasy it's a documentary about life in a modern america i'll tell you why and it's daily take. you need to know this over the next two days the supreme court will hear oral

arguments some half of them today have them tomorrow in two cases concerning the legality of same sex marriage many and how today went and tomorrow goes the court could endorse marriage as a fundamental right enshrined in the constitution they could confirm the rights of states to deny gay couples marriage licenses or they could avoid making a decision altogether stakes have never been higher today the justices listen to arguments in the case of hollingsworth the very central question hollingsworth a very deep areas whether or not a two thousand eight gala for new ballot measure the define marriage as a male female union violates the basic constitutional rights of citizens of california the supporters of that measure proposition eight argue that because marriage as traditionally been understood as a heterosexual partnership the ballot vote did not infringe on any inherent rights in short they want states to have the power to decide the legality of same sex marriage for the. wells the opponents of prop eight on the other hand claim that

gay couples have a fundamental right to marry under the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment by california district court and the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit have already sided with proposition eight opponents in previous litigations. tomorrow the court will hear arguments in the case of united states of the windsor this second same sex marriage case in front of the supreme court concerns the defense of marriage act signed into law by bill clinton the one nine hundred ninety six law prohibits the federal government from offering gay couples the same tax breaks and benefits accorded to straight couples even if those couples live in a state like massachusetts where gay marriage is legal according to petitioner edith windsor the act's ban on federal recognition of state law violates her fifth amendment equal protection rights bill clinton by the way now opposes the defense of marriage act that he signed into law the two cases are the supreme court's biggest since last year's inquiry into obamacare and have broad cultural residence

at a time when america majority of americans have finally come around to supporting marriage equality protesters supporters of gay supporters and opponents of gay marriage alike have held large rallies all day just hundreds of feet from where the court's nine justices are considering the fate of prop eight and doma recordings and transcripts from today's hearings suggest that the debate is as contentious as ever justice antonin scalia the most conservative justice pressed opponents of prop eight to pinpoint exactly when discrimination against gay couples became unconstitutional. we did it constitutional. to exclude homosexual couples from marriage seventeen. eighteen sixty eight when the fourteenth amendment was adopted sometimes sometime after baker where we sit it didn't even resist substantial food group question when

we when and when did the law become this. justice anthony kennedy the court swing vote at one point suggested gay marriage might be too new of an institution for the court to judge fairly at the same time express concern for the children of same sex couples affected by prop eight liberal justices alina kagan and sonia sotomayor challenge the measure supporters to defend their position rationally so what happened over the supreme court this morning the justices overturned prop eight or have some as some commentators have suggested will they dismiss the case out right and what should we expect for tomorrow's hearing on the defense of marriage act sashaying florida supreme court reporter for talk radio news service chain walk they could jump good to see you again so first of all we just in that set up we heard justice scalia asking when did gay marriage do it when did the rights of gay

couples to be married. first get put into the constitution yes and he was intimating there that nothing really has changed in the constitution over the last thirty years there's a public perception public opinion has changed. the society has changed and he would probably argue i'm not going to words about that society change isn't enough he's a so-called strict constructionists and since the constitution hasn't changed the supreme court shouldn't change either so it it's more and then what happened is that ted olson came back and said well then i can ask when did this supreme court change when did to become unconstitutional to discriminate against. in a race in a racial marriage. so in the school he came back he stammered a little bit and said that when the fourteenth amendment came into being so if he was trying to make a point i think ted olson. significantly shot it down by saying the supreme court

will change with society just because the supreme court is behind in recognizing certain rights they have been there all the time prolly not just the supreme court american american not just even american jurisprudence draw i mean sometimes have to catch up this year in court needs so if so if the supreme court with the fourteenth amendment made interracial marriage legal and yes eight hundred sixty eight but then yet another fifty and yet years oh it took forever i mean you know it was nine hundred sixty what sixty seven sixty seven sixty eight the other thing . where where that was struck down and so in them in the meantime you had plessy versus ferguson and then you had broad the board reversing that in all but also that the supreme court justices. on the whole indicated they really want to take the slowly that it was perfectly fine with them this go with the more conservative justices that it considering this maybe we're moving too fast the supreme court hearing this case so quickly and we shouldn't make any rash overarching rules right now it did take sixty seven years for that to happen and the majority of our

history here in the united states it has been between one man and one woman and they are pretty much saying we will slow down or slow down so today's case was about prop eight and kill for exactly and there's this issue of standing yes yes seems to be at the center of today's arguments actually what is standing is whether or not someone can bring a case very simply anyone can file a case but will the court hear it are you the proper person to bring this guy for example if you were harmed in a car accident i could sue someone for your harm and i could walk and say i'm suing on behalf of tom hartman i had to do it myself you'd have to do a show i hired attorney well then i'm suing on your behalf that's right but you have to be in the person who was actually injured in orders. there's to be case in controversy under the article three of the constitution and then clues that the party has to have some kind of remedy some injury that can be remedied by the court or they can just be a general grievance so when the first the case was first brought it was brought by two sets of gay couples who wanted to get married they had standing because they

were being prevented by this proposition eight law. they got a favorable ruling and it was ruled unconstitutional so then there would be an appeal the loser in that case would have been the state of california the officials in the state of california declined to defend prop eight now and they had the very beginning when it was it was very short he did he did defend it in the state level and then it became perry v brown right and then to governor brown is a democrat who supports gay marriage correct and they did not want to defend prop eight on the substance so there was no one there to see no one there defend prop eight so the district court just said ok the people who put forward the initiative i'm going to substitute you folks it and you can defend it and now the problem is when they want to appeal because they lost do they do they have standing or are they that how are they harmed what is their personal injury they are there are others in arguably being insulted because they lost yeah there's no job security it

was said well how do you stand just because you really really really dislike a particular law does not give you standing. and just a sort of mine or even one even further saying well you really can't represent the people of the state of california because you don't have a fiduciary obligation to the new you are not representing the state you're representing your own personal interests in prop eight and where there's a conflict there would be an issue now here's a clip of justice sotomayor take it. outside the. marriage context. can you think of any other rational basis reason. for a state using sexual orientation as a back. in. denying. homosexuals. benefits. now that's not her making the point you just made that's

her basically saying if you're going to if you're if you can't find a legal basis to discriminate against a group of people gays in this case broadly in housing and employment if you can discriminate against them in those bases how can you discriminate against them and what's the difference essentially and by the way that was to mr cooper who was defending prop eight he could not you could not come up with if you continue on in that clip he could not come up with an instance of a marriage where the state has a reason for discriminating and the overall reason that they presented was that it affects the family such that it could harm children that what they want this family union units and the purpose of marriage is for procreation ok and so then the children argument didn't go over all that well with the swing vote justice kennedy didn't seem to had this to say. on the other hand there is an immediate legal injury or legal. what could be

a legal injury and that's the voice of these children or some forty thousand children in california according to the red brief. that live with same sex parents . and who they. want their parents have full recognition and fools to. so. a what do you think is going to come out of this today and be what he thinks it happened it was interesting that there were so many justices both of the liberal leaning and the conservative leaning who really were concerned about the issue of standing whether or not this case should even be before them it would not surprise me if there was in a strange conglomeration of them they got together and said no that you did this party did not have standing you should not be here so they act out of the lower courts and it's toast well they would even say that the ninth circuit court of appeals didn't have standing to the party to stand to bring that appeal so it would be the district court ruling to stand so which also blew it up which also goes away

and your thoughts on what may happen tomorrow it could be different case deals with the same group of people dealing with you know with with same sex marriage but it's what rights once you have legally married what must the federal government provide in terms of can we can the federal government say straight couples get this same sex couples dumped right and that's the i would guess a lot of that is going to turn on i.r.s. code sure also that in terms of the defense department. same sex soldiers you know that we don't ask don't tell is gone now but the defense department came out saying these are all over the rights now that we can give you and if doma is overturned here's all the other rights this is what was one of the last things that panetta wrote as he left it very very upset yes change thanks a lot for being with thank you so much for having me and for showing up this morning as your network. we'll talk more about today's supreme court here in its potential outcomes inside the big picture politics panel coming up after the break .

what do you know if you live. when you don't have a family. when you have new ones too. you can always count on. this man is respected by criminals and also as he is a like fields out x. convicts anonymous people like he used to be.

pretty free. free. free free. free. free. free book your video for your. free media. dot com. bag now it's time to turn things over to our big picture politics panel joining me

tonight horace cooper conservative commentator and senior fellow at the national center for public policy research richard follower of strategist and host of the richard followers show and chris all the conservative commentator and activist all for joining me tonight ok you heard the conversation i had i'm assuming with the supreme court it looks like there consensus seems to be among the speculators and the chattering were that the court has some real doubts about standing in this case but there's this larger issue of the constitutionality of gay rights i'm just curious each of your take on it chris do you you know the at one point. scalia asked the question of ted olson at what point did gay rights the right of gays to marry get put into the constitution and ted olson said at the same time that the rights of people of different sexes or different races to marry got put into the constitution which was eight hundred sixty eight with the passage of the

fourteenth amendment it wasn't fulfilled at that point in time but that's when it got put the constitution where you think so he's basically saying that a behavior is the same as an innate caught in a something you're born with i disagree you know the here's the bottom line tom if the people look at what other people of california just revoked on proposition eight if they if the tide is turning in the polls are all in their favor and those of us who oppose are all you know small minded and and. in the minority why doesn't california just revoke well it says that's a good question in fact that we're wasting everybody's time let's just go back and do it in the final phrase in the arguments richard in the in the in the final closing argument before the court. mr chalker cooper was neutral scooper charles schumer you know the guy who was arguing this he paraphrased jefferson although he didn't he i think had i been writing it i would have said as thomas jefferson said when he was asked you know who should make the final decisions with regard to thinking this is in the marbury vs madison case. he said you know who should make

the decision and he said the people themselves isn't this something that should be up to the states or is this something that the supreme court should be but i think we've seen over the years in the live the life of the supreme court is the supreme court has been a place of the great equalizer or the scales of justice where groups go to find justice brown versus the board of education roe v wade we see tons of those cases where the supreme court sort of plays that middle row where legislators that were you sort of take the legislature the politics out of it and the money out of it and you really have a conversation about the philosophical nature and how that relates to our constitution but aren't those both cases within had to have the court never ruled within ten years legislators would have anyway well i mean you i think that argument i think you know hindsight is twenty twentieth's there's no way to really know if that was the case i think in this particular case what we have i think what we what we've seen here is we've seen a situation where the polls have shifted the tides have shifted and the fact that this case has gone the supreme court mean that's something that is part of our

social cause it's part of our social consciousness in this country and i you know the standing question is a big question we've seen the secretary the secretary general in california say you know there is no standing here but i think you take standing out of it and i think the supreme court making a decision is sort of telling of where we are the society chris does not think for the record just to be clear that the fourteenth amendment confers the right to get married to people who are gay. and she's right about that now. not at all and i'm just and i know that that i talked to high school students last night medicare who is bisexual she wants to marry a man and woman was that put in the fourteenth amendment when the fourteenth amendment was passed and polygamy and the ability to marry ten people because she feels she went to the wind that way actually those things were an aside and when utah became a state well i mean it's a debate about it the federal law you know i don't like it was actually decided but original you do see that on the fourteenth amendment there i do i do i think you know what you think of protection the law and i think the fact of the fourth of them was used for interracial marriages i think that same standing still exists

that you can't discriminate on a commitment between two people who love each other so for us your take on this absolutely let's focus on what the law actually is and chris is absolutely correct when. the mormon church was active in utah before they became a state it whip to the supreme court and that set a precedent that one of the interpretive rules at the time that the fourteenth amendment was crafted we understood that it did not cover this kind of an issue and by the way to people one other one other point to raise here for women mr scalia when mr justice scalia asked the question ted olson did not answer the fourteenth amendment he said it was once we as a society understood that people no longer a choice about being gay that we had this obligation that is something that is a societal policy question not something to be found in the law itself going to

have a clip of a little boy you look at all this and actually did respond saying that it was an eight hundred sixty the first time he responded he was bonded the way that i described and secondly in the fourteenth amendment you can see the congressional debate and absolutely they raised the question of black marriage that was something that they absolutely wanted to address and whether they wanted to address gay marriage they could have said that they were going on and so wait wait hold on. now let's i mean we could talk about the course i want to with this is a philosophical difference that i think we're debating here and that's the big elephant in the room right do you realize and i always ask this question to my conservative colleagues and compatriots is do you really feel as though that people are born and they say i'm going to choose to be gay i'm going to choose to be discriminated against i'm going to choose to be bullied do you think like little kids make those type of choices i just really really guys just as if some reality check here let's get something out of the yeah this is the reality. people prefer to be the top producers are this celebrated stars in america the front page of all

the coverage preferred over the stodgy old white guys in their traditional ways yes a lot of people would probably prefer to be that way you could tell you that you're actually really a blogger to hold out about yourself so no i don't really have your can you tell me a couple years ago when you when you join the military you weren't allowed to talk about you were allowed to express who you really were that people really said this is a great thing i'm going to didn't i'm going to i'm going to choose this lastly even though i know i'm in the military and people can discriminate against me when you have a military you're not allowed to engage in adultery even if you find the person of your choice that you are not if you were here when there was very you can't there are a lot of rules that exist in the military this is the idea that this idea what hebrew for tom what he shows that he is the philosophical difference here chris is on record as saying that you don't believe that people are born gay or straight i mean as you said the earl i don't know oh i don't know yet that doesn't matter whether it doesn't take notice until i let some people meddle with i have friends this is

a choice other people maybe not but you know what some people might feel that they're born with a need to marry two people or temporary to their job their argument or to marry or . balcony fleetly appearing now that completely aren't using the law going to say nothing was right given that you guys have a lot on our economy not what arguments you guys have but we've heard this argument that we've heard the arguments made for good and i don't want to or whatever. we've heard my argument is my own we heard this argument made in the counter-rally that happened today at the site of the article on marriage it was money yes it was made like we didn't choose to be black i woke up as a black man and it was what it was that you're just saying that i don't know if people are born to a born to be gay just like i don't know people are born to be black or not to me i was actually at the rally today and it was imagine i could make that claim so i really know he's here is the fact here is the fact we have a contract the fourteenth amendment was ratified people said this is what they were intending to do if you wish to distort that to address to abortion sanity or all

the other topics that progressives have used the courts to do you push them away to the cultural wardle who says we have this over the last five years once again the only people create the culture wars is the folks on the conservative side i think a progressive misnomer the rise of ice what i had already when. repeal the progressive they're arguing is that we need to accept everybody no matter who they are and the republican party had to really think that the republican party haven't done or who had a was born meeting to people that that actually had last completely because that isn't all that well either dotted half of our leaders are having. on what people that are like are their own meals are they care i don't know where you're going to you are who live here this is really. not. just about are you sad i hope you don't live in agony for that little guy's continued a governing you guys old so far out of the out of the mainstream of. having

governing chorus are you going to use that jeffrey dahmer argument to i don't have any particular argument other than to say we have a contract or you are having a hunter i started ask this question earlier and then we just did a very one off kris is on the record saying she she. sure was ok some are and some are richer i believe is of the opinion that people probably are born knowing what their sexuality is or what their preferences i certainly have you know i was six seven years old i noticed what mine was don't you think the program. civs want to turn this question on that that is not whether they had steak before the supreme court today whether it would be wrong is it would be wrong to you would think that people are born with a with a sense of sexual i didn't know which are or not i do not believe that that's what the history of what has happened with gays in america is anyway like what has happened with being blacks not the lynching not the not the denial of like of old with oh please record is nowhere near that and that is an insult and. this is where this not only you where you look at you look at the gay rights gay rights movement

you know florida you look at the big mitt you look at the gay where you can marry remedy for extraordinary misdeeds and there are now we just misdeeds against gays not three as they have the functional equivalent in this case a wise man once said injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and you know it is and what do you do look at. you look at the old you two movement in a vacuum and just america this is a worldwide problem you look at the laws that are happening in uganda people are being killed and lynched and they're being taken away from their families because of who they choose to love who they choose to commit to and you cannot tell me that there is not some sort of you can't there's no equalization between what the black folks monthly what gay people want to play while the bush administration pushed a very progressive effort to try to thwart those very kinds of issues and get less for me oh i did credit i absolutely no greater being imo you're gonna buy my evangelicals out of the only story however i don't want to hear you know. you're

not interested in fighting those fights you're only interested in fighting not here in america politically or need a language and not a legal or you don't know what i am committed to on what i'm not a man arguments are buggers tell you what you're not i don't my argument is i'm just i just the basic argument yeah i'm not sure but you're just. i could tell him what his arguments are if you can tell me what mine are so i'll assume the same question sort of a. or asked which is if you can't discriminate against gays and housing and jobs should you be able to discriminate against them in your age if the logic that she puts forward is accurate then the answer is no you should but the truth of the matter is that the woman doesn't know it's not in many places in some places and that's the law is in california that's the last step on the community so let the community sell it what you guys want to claim is that the fourteenth amendment that we had our only war in this country about which we resolved with a thirteen fourteen fifteen amendment has now always been hijacked for something

other than all the good that is. done so this is the problem here right i love the whole of the argument you could use about the community but if it wasn't for the course we would still be in segregated schools because the community didn't actually enforce the idea of us being in segregated schools not ok more of tonight's politics pal after the break. wealthy british style. time to. go. to.

market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cancer a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports . he. he.

brought a bag to our politics panel joining me tonight our horoscope are richard power and chris allman let's get back to it yesterday the supreme court we've been talking about supreme court here yesterday they heard arguments in f.t.c. versus watson pharmaceutical and basically with the.