Hi, welcome to the Thursday edition of CNN’s Student News. I’m Carl Azuz. Today we’re going to start at the U.S. Supreme Court, and if you watched our show on Tuesday you know the court’s nine justices are hearing two cases this week about the issue of same-sex marriage. Yesterday, the focus was on a federal law. It’s called the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA. It was passed in 1996 and what it says is that for federal purposes, so we’re talking about U.S. government purposes, marriage is defined as only between one man and one woman. That legal definition can impact things like taxes and benefits. For example, same-sex couples who get married in a state where that’s legal, don’t get access to the same federal benefits as other couples. 

 

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments about a law in California that bans same-sex marriage. So this week we focused on two cases - same general topic, but different legal focus. The court’s rulings aren’t expected for a few months, but we want to give you an idea of what it was like inside the Supreme Court. What you’re about to hear is from Tuesday’s hearings on the law in California.

 

Outside of the marriage context, can you think of any other rational basis, reason, for a state using sexual orientation as a factor in denying homosexuals benefits?

 

Your honor, I cannot. I do not have any - anything to offer you. 

 

I’m curious - when did it become unconstitutional to exclude homosexual couples from marriage?

 

The label marriage means something. Even our opponents ….

 

Sir, if you tell a child that somebody has to be their friend, I suppose you can force that child to say this is my friend, but it changes the definition of what it means to be a friend. And that’s, it seems to me, what supporters of Proposition 8 are saying here. All you’re interested in is the label and you insist on changing the definition of the label. 

 

Traditional marriage has been around for thousands of years. Same-sex marriage is very new. I think it was first adopted in the Netherlands in 2000. So there isn’t a lot of data about its effect. 

 

If you’re over the age of 55, you don’t help us serve the government’s interest in regulating procreation through marriage. So, why is that different?

 

Your honor, even with respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that both parties to the couple are infertile. And the traditional … 

 

I can assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.