President Obama has said that the federal government will not defend DOMA, at least in one federal court district. House speaker John Boehner is talking about bringing the case to court. Suppose he does. What could he say to support his position?

He can’t speak out against homosexuality, because laws against it have been shown to be unconstitutional. He can’t cite the dictionary definition of marriage, because dictionaries are descriptive, not prescriptive.

The burden would be, as the name of the act suggests, to show that marriage between gay couples poses a threat to heterosexual couples. It is not enough to say that it is so. It would be necessary to provide logic or evidence to support the position. I am not able to use even the most twisted logic to think of why gay marriages would cause a heterosexual couple to be less likely to marry or more likely to divorce. There is nothing to indicate this in the states that permit gay marriage.

As far as I can tell, even the current conservative Supreme Court would have no choice but to declare DOMA unconstitutional.