Thirteen years ago, Congress passed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which effectively outlawed same-sex marriage. At that time, no states allowed same-sex couples to marry. It was a so-called "defense" against something that was only hypothetical at the time.
Today we have tens of thousands of married same-sex couples in this country, raising families and paying taxes in the five states that have granted them the right to marry. Both President Clinton, who signed DOMA into law in 1996, and Rep. Bob Barr, who originally authored DOMA have agreed it is time for its repeal. This law prevents states from determining what marriages to allow or not allow by second guessing them at the federal level.
To end this injustice, I co-authored legislation that would ensure that valid marriages are respected under federal law, and spoke at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol announcing the bill's introduction this week.
The Respect for Marriage Act will provide couples with much-needed certainty that their lawful marriages will be honored under federal law and that they will have the same access to federal responsibilities and rights as all other married couples.
The Respect for Marriage Act would not tell any state who can marry or how married couples must be treated for purposes of state law, and would not obligate any person, church, city or state to celebrate or license a marriage of two people of the same sex.
It would merely restore the approach historically taken by states of determining, under principles of comity and full faith and credit, whether to honor a couple's marriage for purposes of state law. Churches should be able to decide what kinds of unions are sanctified by their denomination, but not what kinds of unions are accepted in the civil arena. As an example, the Catholic Church will not remarry a divorced person (without an "annulment"), but divorced men and women are allowed to remarry under civil law.
While I have advocated for the state-by-state approach to equality in marriage, I have done so figuring that getting something with that degree of social change would be much harder if not impossible to get through Congress. While I still believe that, I also believe that federal legislation would be the best-case scenario for the LGBT community. I don't believe your civil rights should depend on what state you live in--Americans should have equal protection under laws that provide equal freedom.
Click here to read the rest of Rep. Polis' essay.
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