According to an article in The Arizona Republic on Thursday, February 24, 2011, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a letter to Congress on February 23, 2011 that the Justice Department would no longer oppose legal challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (the “Act”). This action by Holder is consistent with the Obama administration’s stated position\/belief that the U.S. Constitution forbids discrimination against gays and lesbians in virtually all cases.<\/p>\n
The Act was passed by Congress in 1996. Among other things, it provides that neither the federal government nor the states are obligated to recognize same sex marriages. This is why the state of Texas, for example, is not required to recognize a same sex marriage validly performed in another state which allows same sex marriage. See my 2\/23\/11 post. <\/em>Without opposition from the Justice Department, a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the Act will probably be more likely to succeed.<\/p>\n If the Act is found to be unconstitutional, the states will not immediately be forced to grant marriage rights to gays. That would likely require a much broader ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that, for example, all state laws limiting marriage to “one man and one woman” deny gays and lesbians “equal protection of the laws” provided by the Fourteenth Amendment. Abolition of the Act, however, probably would<\/strong> require states to recognize (give “full faith and credit” to) same sex marriages validly entered in other states. In addition, with the Act judicially abolished, the federal government would not be able to deny benefits to gays and lesbians who are legally married.<\/p>\n Copyright \u00a9 2011 by Scoresby Family Law \u2013 J. Kyle Scoresby, P.C. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to an article in The Arizona Republic on Thursday, February 24, 2011, U.S. Attorney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[114],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-77","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-stuff","tag-same-sex-marriages"],"yoast_head":"\n