Defense of Marriage Act author changed his mind
Last Monday in the Los Angeles Times, the original author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Bob Barr, wrote an op-ed declaring that he’d made a mistake. The act allows states to not recognize same-sex marriages formed in other states. At the time, Comgress was motivated by the 1993 decision of the Hawaiian Supreme Court to allow same-sex marriages (In 1998, Hawaii’s voters reversed the court by passing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.)
Barr, the Libertarian candidate for president last year, was a congressman from Georgia at the time he helped author the bill. Now, having seen the law in action for over a decade, he has decided that the act hasn’t functioned the way he expected. Instead of making an equal-rights argument in favor of gay marriage, Barr makes a Federalist argument:
In effect, DOMA’s language reflects one-way federalism: It protects only those states that don’t want to accept a same-sex marriage granted by another state. Moreover, the heterosexual definition of marriage for purposes of federal laws — including, immigration, Social Security survivor rights and veteran’s benefits — has become a de facto club used to limit, if not thwart, the ability of a state to choose to recognize same-sex unions.
Even more so now than in 1996, I believe we need to reduce federal power over the lives of the citizenry and over the prerogatives of the states. It truly is time to get the federal government out of the marriage business. In law and policy, such decisions should be left to the people themselves.
Naturally, same-sex marriage advocates are thrilled with his decision.
