Defense Of Marriage Act

Democrats introduced legislation Wednesday that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, a renewed attack on the 15-year-old law the Obama administration has said it would no longer defend in court from challenges brought on behalf of same-sex couples. The legislation comes as the Republican-led House has initiated its own legal defense of the act, which prevents gay couples from receiving various federal rights that are extended to heterosexual couples. "It is time to right this wrong," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.)

House Republican leaders voted Wednesday to launch what could be a lengthy legal battle against granting federal rights and benefits to same-sex couples, deciding to join a series of pending court battles to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, which the Obama administration has decided to no longer defend as constitutional. A five-member panel convened by House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) directed the House counsel to initiate a legal defense of the 15-year-old law. Democrats on the panel, who are a minority, opposed the move.

The Obama administration scored a victory of sorts in federal court Monday when a judge threw out an Orange County gay couple's lawsuit claiming that the federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Just last week a top Justice Department lawyer sought the dismissal of the lawsuit on grounds that the couple, Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer of Mission Viejo, had failed to identify any personal harm suffered because of the 1996 law, which bars the federal government from treating same-sex marriages as legal or granting federal benefits to same-sex spouses.

This week, the United States Supreme Court is delving into arguments about same-sex marriage and doing so with apparent reluctance and unease. Today, the justices will consider the federal Defense of Marriage Act that denies federal benefits to same-sex married couples. On Tuesday, the issue before them was California's Proposition 8, the voter-approved initiative that placed a same-sex marriage ban in the state constitution in 2008. A U.S. District Court judge subsequently declared the ban unconstitutional, and in 2012 the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling.

Next spring, when the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in United States vs. Windsor, a case challenging the Defense of Marriage Act, one argument likely to be made by DOMA's supporters is that of "responsible procreation. " The theory, which has been embraced by some courts and rejected by others, holds that federal marriage benefits are offered because the government has an interest in promoting stable families in which children are raised by their two biological parents.

What will the Supreme Court decide first: whether states can deny same-sex couples the right to marry or whether the federal government can refuse to recognize same-sex couples' valid marriages under state law? Now that the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has declined to rehear Perry vs. Brown, the challenge to California's Proposition 8, and the 1st Circuit has ruled Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, unconstitutional, that question has taken on an increased sense of urgency.

House Republican leaders said Monday they intend to support the Defense of Marriage Act after the Obama administration announced last week it would no longer legally defend the law, which it considers unconstitutional. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) is reviewing ways to provide legal support for the law, a spokesman said. The House could file friend-of-the-court briefs or take other steps. "All available options are under discussion," Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said.

It's hard to remember an initiative campaign that tore California in two as painfully as Proposition 8 did. The state might as well retire the number 8 when it comes to propositions; it will long be associated only with the 2008 measure that took the right to wed from gay and lesbian couples, on the same ballot that helped elect Barack Obama president. Proposition 8, which shamefully wrote a ban on same-sex marriage into the state Constitution, was a backlash against the defining civil rights struggle of this era: the quest for equal rights for homosexuals.

Gay rights advocates won another victory Thursday in their fight for equal treatment under law, when the U.S appeals court in New York struck down a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act and held for the first time that gays and lesbians are a minority group deserving of special protection from discrimination under the Constitution. The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in Man- hattan joined a growing number of federal judges in New England and California who have ruled that the U.S. government may not deny equal federal benefits to legally married gay couples.

WASHINGTON - Marriage should be limited to unions of a man and a woman because they alone can "produce unplanned and unintended offspring," opponents of gay marriage have told the Supreme Court. By contrast, when same-sex couples decide to have children, "substantial advance planning is required," said Paul D. Clement, a lawyer for House Republicans. This unusual defense of traditional marriage was set out last week in a pair of opening legal briefs in the two gay marriage cases to be decided by the Supreme Court this spring.