| California Leaders Lobby Congress to End Discriminatory Law
by Brian Leubitz
There are a few facts that should probably come up first here. DOMA is unconstitutional. It violates the full faith and credit clause in addition to equal protection and due process claims. And that will be decided at some point soon, as the case is now at the appellate court level. However, for the time being the law is on the books, and we need to eliminate it.
Sen. Feinstein has been pushing DOMA repeal this legislative session, and got the bill out of the Judiciary Committee on a party line vote last week. Now Governor Brown and several California Mayors are pressing Congressional leaders to repeal as well.
The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act "is a stain on our common values," Lee and 14 other mayors and governors from around the nation said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted last week to repeal the law.
In a separate letter, Brown noted that 18,000 gay and lesbian couples were legally wed in California in the five months before November 2008, when voters reinstated the ban on same-sex marriage by passing Proposition 8. Those marriages remain valid despite a state Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8, which is now being challenged in federal court.
"Californians in these marriages deserve to be treated the same by the federal government and other states as Californians in other legal marriages," Brown told the Senate committee. (SF Chronicle)
Other California signatories to the Mayoral letter were Mayors Villaraigosa of LA and Sanders of San Diego. |
