One week before our National DOMA protest, the waves of change are already starting to form! Bob Barr, the infamous author of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), wrote an op-ed in the LA Times stating that DOMA should be repealed! This is something worth celebrating, and something we should take to the next level.
Ever since we announced January 10th’s National DOMA Protest, we learned that many members of the LGBTQ community do not even know what DOMA is. DOMA, put simply, is one current reason LGBTQ rights are so hard to come by. When you drill down to the heart of DOMA, it was launched as an effort to keep same-sex couples from gaining the same rights as heterosexual married couples… in other words, it was born out of a need to restrict the rights of the LGBTQ community. DOMA has been used time and time again to continually restrict the rights of the LGBTQ community in employment, spousal benefits, property ownership, insurance, etc. Many view it as discrimination written into the constitution (I am one of those many).
On January 10th, we are protesting to repeal DOMA and to gain 1 Million Signatures on our Open Letter to Barack Obama. This letter is meant to serve as a reminder to Obama of the promises that he made to our community, which he wrote in an Open Letter to the LGBTQ Community in early 2008. In that letter, he promised to repeal DOMA. We drafted a letter that uses his exact words in an effort to remind him just how accountable we expect him to be for his promises. Many requests have been made to broaden this letter and add a request for full gay marriage, or other initiatives to the list. We do not want to deter from the point of the letter though: Repeal DOMA. Hold True to Your Promises. Your Words DO Have Meaning.
DOMA Defined:
On September 21st, 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was signed into federal law. DOMA, wrote discrimination into the Constitution with two strict regulations:
- No state (or other political subdivision within the United States) need treat a relationship between persons of the same sex as a marriage, even if the relationship is considered a marriage in another state.
- The Federal Government may not treat same-sex relationships as marriages for any purpose, even if concluded or recognized by one of the states.
To drive the point even further, 37 states slowly but surely adopted DOMA as a state-wide regulation further amending state Constitutions. This appalling law tells the American people that it is OK to discriminate. That it is OK to recognize the LGBTQ community as less than equal. This same law, that the California Supreme Court deemed unconstitutional set the precedence for Proposition 8. This same law has nullified many rights that come with Domestic Partnerships. This law does not just affect members of the LGBTQ community - it also repeals rights from heterosexual non-married couples. This law has nullified the heterosexual rights that come with Common Law Marriage. This law blurred the lines of separation of church and state even further. And this law, is one of many that President Elect Barack Obama has PROMISED to repeal in his “Open Letter to the LGBTQ Community.
DOMA is not a speed bump on the road to full equality. It is not even a road block. DOMA is a gigantic brick wall that is crumbling! On January 10th, we encourage you to find a protest in or near your city. Join in this important national moment, where we will work together to shed light on the negative effects of DOMA. Help us get signatures between now and Jan 10th on the Open Letter to Barack Obama. Bob Barr, who created the beast, is now in our corner to help us defeat it! He started the wall crumbling, now it’s time we come together this Saturday with our own “demo team” to help tear it down!
11 Responses
I question that DOMA “wrote discrimination into the Constitution”. Because DOMA was a law and not a constitutional amendment, it did not change the constitution.
Posted on January 5th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
[...] more here: Join The Impact » Blog Archive » Breaking News - Author of DOMA … Share and [...]
Posted on January 5th, 2009 at 9:05 pm
Discrimination sux
Posted on January 5th, 2009 at 11:16 pm
@steven
Same. People keep saying stuff is discrimination written into the constitution when it’s not.
It is discrimination, but don’t discount your point by making stuff up…
That being said, down with DOMA
Posted on January 6th, 2009 at 1:12 am
It’s all over for DOMA. It’s way beyond time.
Posted on January 6th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
President Obama, tear down this wall!!!
Posted on January 7th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Hi webmaster! pgq
Posted on January 11th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
this country was founded on puritanical christian beliefs, however, those puritans and migrant farmers who started this country and wrote the constitution escaped religions prosectution and wrote into the constitution a SEPARATION of church and state where GOD is supposed to have nothing to do with the law no matter how much it hurts to your personal beliefs stepped on, so we set up some basic rules and that’s that, marriage can very well be decided to be a legal union between two individuals and it doesn’t have to be between a penis and a vagina, and the only thing that is holding us back are the religious beliefs of our lawmakers and occasionally, if it gets through those lawmakers, the religious beliefs of the uneducated and unchanging public… relgion should be separate, period
Posted on January 12th, 2009 at 2:17 pm
[...] 2004: http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/relationships/12110leg20040330.html Jan 5, 2009: http://jointheimpact.com/2009/01/breaking-news-author-of-doma-asks-for-repeal/ [...]
Posted on January 12th, 2009 at 8:49 pm
The Founding Fathers never put the words “separation of church and state” anywhere in the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, or the Amendments. Read them. Those words are nowhere. What IS there are the words Creator (and the fact that He gives the citizens their rights), no laws shall respect religion OR prohibit the free exercise thereof, and no religious tests being allowed. They also picked a day off for Congress: Sunday.
Religion wasn’t explicitly set up and “walled” off within the documents because it was so much a part of their lives that it just flowed right out of them without their thinking about it. It never occurred to most of them that life could be lived otherwise. What they wanted to make sure of, was that no PARTICULAR religion got favored, and so, as Thomas Jefferson mentions in a CAMPAIGN LETTER to a group of Baptists, by its very structure “a wall of separation between Church & State” (his quote) exists in the Constitution.
My point? Yes Shelly, God has everything to do with the government, just as long as it is nobody’s in particular.
As for marriage, it isn’t even in there because it is a local issue, and as Amendment 10 says (paraphrasing), whatever right the Feds don’t already have in the Constitution goes back to the States. However, there is a “full faith” clause in the Constitution (Article 4, Sec. 1) that says If its done in one state another state has to recognize it–But Congress can decide how to enforce me (the clause).
So, when enough people worried over their rights as citizens to choose the standards of their communities in regards to gay/straight relationships, Clinton signed the DOMA to let people know that just because one state may adopt civil unions or gay marriage (the Northeast ones, for example) the others don’t have to until they see fit (Arizona, California). It is actually giving more freedom to the people, keeping the decision making power in their hands, where it belongs.
But since it is a law that directly affects the Constitution, you could, as Amy put it, say that it is “discrimination written into the Constitution.” This isn’t always bad. The definition of “to discriminate” simply means the ability to make decisions and choices.
Posted on January 16th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Since when are communities given the right to decide who is right and who is wrong? The reason our Constitution is set up the way it is, is to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. To me, when the majority of the community says ” I, personally, do not believe in gay marriage, so therefore no gay person is allowed to get married because it offends ME,” you are not allowing the minority to make their own decisions and choices. Majority rule is fine when making policy, but completely unconstitutional when the majority decides how a sect of society they have nothing to do with is forced to live.
Think of it this way: what if YOU were part of a minority? How would you feel if your neighbors told you that how you lived was unacceptable, and proceeded to pass a law banning you from your pursuit of Life, Liberty, and Happiness?
I hear similar stories constantly, in many different debates. “I have the right not to be offended.” This statement cannot be farther from the truth; you ABSOLUTELY do NOT have the right to not be offended, if it means taking the rights and liberties away from someone else. If your religion dictates gays cannot marry, then don’t talk to gays. But no where in the constitution is it written or implied that outdated religious beliefs take precident over the progressive notion that all peoples, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation, deserve the same rights. And yes, marriage is a right.
Posted on March 5th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
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