Overwhelming Support for Repealing the Defense of Marriage Act

categories: Defense of Marriage Act, Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights and Politics, Marriage Equality

Published September 10, 2009 @ 10:48AM PT

Repeal DOMA

The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is one of the worst, most discriminatory bills ever written into law. It's the thirteen-year-old gift that keeps on discriminating against gays and lesbians, denying millions of folks their right to Social Security survivors' benefits, equal treatment under U.S. immigration laws, the right to take leave to care for a spouse, and more. A time for a repeal of DOMA is now.

Efforts are underway in Congress to introduce a bill calling for a repeal of DOMA, with Rep. Jerry Nadler from New York taking the lead. Going hand-in-hand with the proposed legislation is an initiative from the Human Rights Campaign -- RepealDOMANow.org -- that hopes to mobilize tens of thousands of letters from folks urging their Congressional Reps to overturn DOMA. You can take action here to help make that happen.

"Thanks to a string of state-level victories, tens of thousands of loving, same-sex couples across the country have finally been able to join in marriage this year," HRC says on RepealDOMANow.org. "Yet because of DOMA, enacted in 1996, the federal government doesn't recognize a single one."

And they're right. No matter that marriage equality is the law in places like Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Iowa, New Hampshire or Maine (ballot initiative pending). DOMA means that couples married in these states won't be recognized on the federal level, and won't have access to the more than 1,100 benefits that straight couples receive from the federal government.

That's unfair, unjust, and unconstitutional. Much like HRC's new Web site says, it's time to Repeal DOMA Now.

(Photo courtesy of stevebott's photostream on Flickr.)

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Comments (6)

The intolerant DOMA must be repealed. It's good that Jerry Nadler is being prominent in his support of repealing DOMA. It's unfortunate that married same-sex couples in states that do recognize that important right are not elgible to receive over 1,000 federal benefits and that is a shame. DOMA is of a previous time, reflecting an element of intolerance from that time, but now, progress must be kept flowing. The Human Rights Campaign is doing the correct thing by being strong.

Posted by Edwin Bonilla on 09/10/2009 @ 02:51PM PT
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who are these people trying to take away LGBT rights anyway??? these people not only make me sick, they confuse me. Why should they care what people different from them are doing? Why even fight and discriminate against LGBT? Oh yeah it must be the ancestors of the bigots that fought against women and blacks rights. GIVE UP YOU SPINELESS IDIOTS! Give us our rights and leave us alone and crawl back into whatever misery you like to create for yourself. We deserve better and its pathetic that we have to try so hard to get it. This world is rotting because of these people.

Posted by Kyle Noland on 09/10/2009 @ 05:14PM PT
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I will have to disagree about the spineless part. I have studied fundies for quite some time, and although they have insect brains with hive mentalities, they do in fact have far more spine than these people and politicians who say they support segregation and in the words of our fearless leader: "I whole heartily believe that marriage should only be a union of one man and one women"

As we have been told by the fundies. "if you do not like it here move to Canada fag!"(brainless fundie) To people like that I agree lets leave this shit hole of a country and go to one that actually accepts us as human beings. So i say to that idiot; "thank you! All gay people should move from the US to Canada. They could use the doctors, lawyers, nurses, designers, engineers, professors and fully trained and combat ready military personnel that this country so wishes to discard so readily." Then we should come back in a few years and see how much of a welfare, uneducated, religiously indoctrinated, anti-science, anti-progress country this shit hole will become.

I personally will laugh my ass off before Canada pushes the big red button and glasses this part of the continent for the better of the world. Because if the US does become like I mentioned we will be worse than the middle east. People with nukes waiting for the rapture... yeah that is a wonderful cocktail isn't it?

Posted by Chris Marshall on 10/11/2009 @ 10:34AM PT
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Signed.

Posted by Thomas McHugh on 09/11/2009 @ 05:18AM PT
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It's great to hear that there is so much support for the repeal of DOMA. This obscenity should never have been passed in the first place and it needs to be repealed NOW (along with the equally-obscene DADT).

I always wonder why these bigots CARE who we are or what we do. Mind your own damned business before someone minds it for you!

Posted by Ioan Lightoller on 09/14/2009 @ 07:28AM PT
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Cynthia Nixon excellently articulated why repealling DOMA should be our top priority at the National Equality March Rally on Sunday. I loved the speech and my friend even started crying.

Check it out on youtube. Then send a letter to your representatives and senators. Then arrange a meeting in person with them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zhPfE4DZ0s

Posted by Greg Goldgof on 10/12/2009 @ 04:20AM PT
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Michael is the Communications Director for the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, and previously was Communications Director for Pax Christi USA, a progressive Catholic human rights organization.