No one aspires as a child to grow up and enter into a domestic partnership. But they do aspire as children to grow up and be married.

The very idea of marriage is basic to recognition as equals in our society any status short of that is inferior, unjust, and unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has said that: Marriage is the most important relation in life. Now that's being withheld from the plaintiffs. It is the foundation of society. It is essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. It's a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights and older than our political parties. One of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause. A right of intimacy to the degree of being sacred. And a liberty right equally available to a person in a homosexual relationship as to heterosexual persons.

The reality is that our independent judiciary is the most respected branch of our government and the envy of the world.

My wife had taken off on a plane. Two airplanes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I, of course, like any other person, felt potentially devastated, panicky a little bit.

I immediately called the command center of the Department of Justice to let them know that my wife was on a plane that had been hijacked. I mainly wanted them know there was another hijacked plane out there.

It happens every once in awhile at the federal level when the solicitor general, on behalf of the U.S., will confess error or decline to defend a law. I don't know what is going through the [Obama] administration's thought process on 'don't ask, don't tell.' It would be appropriate for them to say 'the law has been deemed unconstitutional, we are not going to seek further review of that.'