I don't think the Fed should be in the marriage business in the first place. Let the states decide and go from there.
It's not that simple. It is impossible to leave same-sex marriage up to the states for much longer...at some point, the federal government will have to get more involved. There are all kinds of federal issues in play here. The laws would obviously differ widely from same-sex marriage states to non-same sex marriage states (or even within those groupings), which leaves plenty of room for ambiguity that only the feds could solve. David Frum, a conservative pundit at the American Enterprise Institute who is neutral in the gay marriage debate, came up with a list of scenarios to illustrate this point. Here are Frum's scenarios:
1) A man from an SSM state buys a condo in a non-SSM state. He marries another man back home—but he dies before he can write a will. Who inherits the condo?
2) Two women from an SSM state marry. One of them becomes pregnant. The couple splits up, and the woman who bore the child moves to a non-SSM state. The other woman sues for visitation rights. What should the state’s courts do?
3) A man in an SSM is accused of stock fraud. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenas his spouse. The spouse claims marital privilege and refuses to answer the SEC’s questions. May the SEC compel him to answer anyway?
4) Two women marry in an SSM state. The relationship sours. Without obtaining a divorce, one of the women moves to a non-SSM state and marries a man. Has she committed bigamy?
5) Two married men are vacationing in another state. One of them has a stroke. The hospital concludes he will never recover. Local law requires the hospital to ask the next of kin whether to maintain life support. Whom should it ask?
6) A man from an SSM state marries a foreign visitor of the same sex. Should the foreigner be entitled to U.S. residency? What if the foreign man has also adopted the American man's child?
7) A family in a non-SSM state sets up a trust for their son. The son moves to an SSM state, marries a man, and then gets divorced. The trust is the son's only financial asset. Should the courts of the SSM state take the trust into account when dividing up the couple’s assets? If yes, what happens when the trustees back in the non-SSM state refuse to comply?
8) A woman married to another woman wins a lawsuit against a corporation in a non-SSM state. The successful plaintiff dies without a will before she can collect her debt. Her closest blood relative demands that the corporation pay the relative, not the surviving
spouse. Who gets the money?