Repealing DOMA

There is a great deal of hypocrisy  in the U.S. Congress of representatives consistently supporting civil rights and at the same time opposing the right of same-sex couples to marry, and of the LGBT community to experience their other constitutional rights.  Many site God as their homophobic reasoning, others refer to morals and tradition.

There is no moral requirement to get married.  There is nothing immoral about being gay and wanting to get married.  People of all races, religions, genders and sexual orientations can be immoral but only gay people are denied the right to marry.  Rapists and murderers can be married as long as the lovely person they are marrying is of the opposite sex. 

Many traditions of the past would be considered immoral in society today.  Traditions such as dueling and human sacrifice are no longer practiced because we grow and develop as a society and learn to question traditions and beliefs.  We should start a new tradition in America, equality for all. The Declaration of Independence says “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”  Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness clearly includes who you choose to marry.

Churches and other religious institutions can act according to their own beliefs and theologies; nobody is trying to interfere in their lives.  This is not a church or religious issue. Marriage is a civil issue, sadly defined as a legal union of one man and one woman, since the passing of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Despite my complicated love for President Bill Clinton, I have to mention that he, with a large majority of both houses of Congress, signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on September 21, 1996.  This law prevents the federal government from recognizing marriages of gay and lesbian couples, denying same-sex couples more than 1,100 federal benefits and protections including spousal survival benefits of gay military families and social security benefits.  Also, because of this law, gay couples cannot file joint federal income tax returns and take deductions and surviving gay spouses don’t have any protection from estate taxes. 

The law has been ruled unconstitutional in eight federal courts, including the first and second court of appeals.  The Obama administration communicated that the Department of Justice would no longer defend the act in Federal court and thankfully, in 2009 Bill Clinton said his past position on the issue was “wrong.”  “I think gay marriage is a good thing not a bad thing.  And I just realized that, I was, probably for, maybe just because of my age and the way I’ve grown up, I was wrong about that.”

Five cases are waiting on a response to review in the Supreme Court and the LGBT community is confident that the court will ultimately rule in favor of repealing the law.  The authors of the Defense of Marriage act introduced this unnecessary law to manufacture more hatred in this world.  The gay community has suffered enough discrimination and hopefully this senseless defining of marriage has only brought more awareness to the plight.