There is No Defense for 'The Defense of Marriage Act'

In February, President Obama made a stunning announcement; he called the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional and directed the Justice Department to stop defending the law in court. Although not a final victory, we wanted to celebrate this step in the right direction, by re-publishing our 2009 post on DOMA.

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This essay was originally published online at The MotherHood Magazine on October 25, 2009. Read additional contributions by Deborah Goldstein—"It's The Civil Rights, Stupid!", and Clain and Bryan Thomson-DiPalma —"Daddy2", on this topic.

Backwards and In High Heels
BY LISA DUGGAN

Last October I celebrated the 13th wedding anniversary of my second marriage.

Yes, that’s right. This is my second federally and state-sanctioned coupling.

I was only twenty-two when I ran down to Staten Island’s tiny city hall and married my high-school sweetheart.  Like the multitude of impulsive twenty-somethings who came before us, we married for a number of bad reasons and only one good one: we loved each other.  But New York State didn’t ask, so we never had to tell anyone why we wanted to marry, only that we did.  Two signatures and two vials of blood later we got our certificate — and the over 1,138 legal rights and benefits that came with. 

    The State was there as well, three years later, when we decided to get unmarried — and this time they were asking questions. Cruel and inhuman treatment? Abandonment for a period of one or more years? Adultery?  Who did what to whom, and when: it was all material to our legal grounds for divorce.  Because we had no children and had already willingly divided our assets, these questions seemed unnecessary and intrusive. Although I couldn’t appreciate it at the time, our divorce made visible the hundreds of federal and state laws designed to protect all the naive twenty-somethings, and hopelessly optimistic fourth-time-bethrothed, equally.

    For better, or for worse. In widowhood, or child-custody court.

    Provided they are heterosexual, of course.

    Currently, there are about a dozen states in this country that grant licenses for civil unions or same-sex marriages, which convey roughly the same number of rights to gay couples as to straight, within that State.  However, none of these marriages are federally recognized, and this is significant for a number of reasons. 

    This means that a couple legally married say, by the State of Connecticut, who share a home and 2.5 kids, and who dutifully pay their federal income taxes, would be viewed simply as really close friends when passing through a dozen other states on their way to vacation in the Grand Canyon — and so they’d better remember to pack the adoption papers along with the diapers.  It means that our government will not pay Social Security benefits to the same-sex spouse of any enlisted person, grunt or officer, even if their partner of fifteen years dies while defending this country.  

    Is it just me, or does all this scream civil rights violations? 

    Especially when you consider that this legal landscape is neither an oversight, nor a murky interpretation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution, which manages potential conflicts between various states’ rules.  In fact, the US Congress had to go out of its way to create this “marriage apartheid.”  The 1996 law that unfairly singles out some American citizens based solely on sexual orientation is called The Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  The law was inspired when several gay couples from Hawaii sued for the right to legally marry and it was signed into law by that hero of marital fidelity, Bill Clinton.

    DOMA doesn’t prohibit individual states from allowing gay marriages — but it denies federal recognition of these marriages and grants each state the right to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages issued by other states.  Keeping gay families unequal and separate.  As one legal scholar has observed, DOMA

“create(s) a set of second-class marriages, valid under state law but void for all federal purposes. The exclusion of a class of valid state marriages from all federal recognition is ‘unprecedented in our jurisprudence”.*

And the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment will forever seal this separate status by defining marriage to be between one man and one woman.  

    We’ve been here before, although some refuse to see the parallels — it wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional every miscegenation law in the country.

    While I sipped champagne and celebrated marriage number two, I thought about all my friends, and the many families in my neighborhood, waiting patiently for the right to toss that bouquet for the first time.  Will this be the year, or the administration?  Pessimistic, I’m sobered by the fact that South Africa legalized gay marriage in November 2006.

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* The Gay Rights Question in Contemporary American Law by Andrew Koppleman

CHILD CARE by Joe Weil

Today, I thought we could all use some perspective on how parenting has changed—via the beautiful poetry of Joe Weil. Weil is an American poet from New Jersey, "renowned for his humor, story telling and eloquence." He currently teaches undergraduate and graduate creative writing classes at Binghamton University.

This poem was originally published in Issue #3, 2007, of The MotherHood magazine and is reprinted here with Joe's permission. Enjoy!

CHILD CARE by Joe Weil

The smoke was thick everywhere in 1967.

Libraries had ashtrays.

Nuns sucked down Lucky strikes

In cloistered gardens.

The Dalai Lama had a puff on a camel every now and then.

My parent’s junker Ford was no exception.

My sister and brother and I sat

Sans seat belt, sans safety

Sans everything

in the midst of their exhalations.

We were raised on the poison

Of our parents smokers  breath.

Spanked when we were little shits,

and kicked out doors

Promptly every Saturday afternoon

After the morning cartoons

To entertain ourselves

By playing Dracula down by the tracks,

and with real iron spikes..

No soccer moms, no corporate fathers

Tried to give us quality time..

No one protected us out of our lives,

I felt special

Because the floor of our  58 Ford

Had a huge gaping hole in it

Through which I could see all the pot holes

And highway cracks and the stray wads of chewing gum

Whirring by at sixty miles per

As we took our Sunday drive in the country

Which was really just the suburbs—

The place where Ward Cleaver lived,

Where Jeanie hid, luscious and well kept

By “master” from her nosy neighbors—

A place where a house might have two full bathrooms.

A rich person had two bathrooms.

Of this I was sure.

That was my definition.

They dressed like Sunday everyday,

And looked slightly pained when their kids

Broke a window, or listened to evil boys like Eddie Haskel.

I dangled my feet in the hole, tempting fate,

Just inches from the macadam.

A little lower and I would have been crippled for the rest of my life,

Left to push myself around in a cart

Like Jimmy the horse,

Veteran of world war two, who ran numbers for the bookie,

Who always grabbed the asses of the teen age girls,

And got away with it because he’d been a  war hero.

I imagined myself a crip, like Porgy

On WPIX

Singing “Bess, you is my woman now,”

In a deep rich bass,

Killing a man with twice my muscle mass

Because  as you know, love gives us strength.

I dangled my feet till my brother, tired of torturing

the statue of Saint Christopher with his GI Joe, ratted me out,

And my mother suggested I just drop

Into that void, just  kill myself for all she cared,

Though I knew what she meant, understood her hard ass,

Knew that  she cared

Before the age of toxic relationships,

Before love learned to speak correctly,

And forever lost its voice.