A Supreme Court ruling on DOMA could shape the election

[A] veteran expert on Ohio elections, political scientist John Green, director of the Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron said, “I’m convinced that the marriage amendment in Ohio made a difference in 2004 in two respects. By far the most important was the mobilization of religious activists, whose work on balance helped mobilize conservative voters. The second and smaller impact was on the Bush vote.”…

Whelan, a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, served in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration.

He added, “Same-sex marriage supporters recognize that that the very grounds on which President Obama now says Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional would also require him to take the position that traditional marriage laws are unconstitutional — a position that he has declined to take.”

Dale Carpenter, a law professor at University of Minnesota and a supporter of same-sex marriage, said that if the high court strikes down Section 3 of DOMA it would prompt questions about the validity of state laws that say the same thing: that marriage can only be between one man and one woman.

“One would be very hard pressed to come up with an argument that struck down the federal definition of marriage, but nevertheless left in place the state definitions of marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” Carpenter said.