Into what kind of knots should a government twist itself to defend its own discredited policies? In a highly unusual move Wednesday, President Barack Obama in effect declared the twisting on one law, the Defense of Marriage Act, is over and done. The administration announced that it would no longer defend the law, nicknamed DOMA, against legal challenges.
The law, approved in 1996, banned federal recognition of same-sex marriages and allowed states to ignore same-sex marriages performed across state lines. Many people then feared Hawaii was on the verge of approving same-sex marriages and that other states would be forced to follow suit.
And, indeed, under the Constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, states are generally obligated to recognize the public acts, judicial proceedings and records — including marriages — of every other state. It’s hard now to reconstruct the emotional ferocity of that moment. But the Defense of Marriage Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton, we should note, and even people previously perceived as gay-rights supporters went along with it.
Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., for one, has called his vote in support of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996 “the worst vote of my political career.” His belief was that passage of the new law would take the steam out of an effort to mobilize the Republican base, but instead, he acknowledged in 2009, it only inflamed animosity.
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