Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced Friday that the Judiciary Committee would mark up and then vote on the Respect For Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.
Repeal of DOMA would make it legal for same-sex married couples to, for example, collect Social Security benefits due to spouses, live in married housing on military bases if one or both of the couple are in the military, and file joint returns on their Federal income tax. As it is, a same-sex couple, while legally married for the purposes of state law in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Iowa, California and the District of Columbia, are strangers to the Federal government.
WASHINGTON (Oct. 14, 2011) -- Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) announced Friday that he intends to schedule Committee consideration of the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), in November.
"The march for equality continues, and now is the time to ensure equality for gay and lesbian Americans who are lawfully married..."
Of course having it voted on in committee does not mean in will be passed without amendments (although every Democratic member of the committee is a supporter of the bill). And having it voted out of committee does not mean it will get a vote on the Senate floor. And having it up for a vote in the Senate does not mean it will pass the Senate. And having it pass the Senate does not mean it will pass the House. However...
Adam Bink of the Courage Campaign and administrator of one of its websites, Prop 8 Trial Tracker, wrote a wonderful essay about the long-term effort to repeal DOMA. It's entitled Movements don't start and stop every two years, and I suggest you read it in its entirety. A few key excerpts:
Why work on something that has no chance of going anywhere immediately?
... it wasn't like we all woke up on November 5th, 2008, and said to ourselves, "Wow, we may have a pro-repeal House, Senate and President coming in January. I guess we can go start repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell now!
... That conversation started in 1993... and it took over 17 long years to end it. If you told me, "why bother spending your time trying to get rid of Don't Ask, Don't Tell ... every single year from 1995-2001, when anti-repeal Republicans controlled the House and Senate; or 2001-2009, when President Bush wasn't going to support repeal, and we all sat on our hands for 17 years, then when we woke up on November 5th, 2008, public opinion would not have climbed to an astounding 77% in Massachusetts, which played a role in Sen. Brown finally caving and voted for repeal. We would not have had the critically important Joint Chiefs onboard, nor scores of members of Congress, nor editorials in newspapers across America in support of repeal... We would have not been in a position to deliver the final knockout that we did in December 2010 (and barely, at the 11th hour, at that).
Movements aren't built in two years, and they don't start and stop every two years... Today, servicemembers are still treated as second-class because of DOMA. So are legally married same-sex couples. So, there's a problem. So, the organizing begins now. And so does the infrastructure to support it.
Since the Respect for Marriage Act was introduced in February by Senator Feinstein, it has accrued the support of the White House and gotten thirty co-sponsors in the Senate -- a number of which have been obtained through grassroots efforts on the part of advcoates and constituents. A sister bill in the House has gotten one hundred and twenty eight co-sponsors.
What can you do to help make the long march to repeal DOMA a bit shorter?
- If either of your Senators is not on this list of cosponsors of S.598m the Respect for Marriage Act, call and email them to let them know of your support for the bill.
- If your US Representative is not on this list of cosponsors of HR.1116, the corresponding House bill, call your representative to let them know you support the bill and would like to see them cosponsor it.
- More than 12,400 people have signed this petition to repeal DOMA at We The People. It is the 15th most popular petition out of hundreds, with more than 12,400 signatures, and the 10th most popular one that does not involve drug policy. The Administration already supports the repeal of DOMA, but making it obvious that this important to lots of people cannot hurt. You can also sign this petition to legalize same sex marriage, which now has
almost more than 10,000 signatures.
- You can join and/or financially support the Courage Campaign, helping it to continue its efforts to persuade Senators and Congresspeople to support DOMA repeal.
- You can support the ACLU and Lambda Legal, two of the organizations that are fighting DOMA in the courts in such cases as Windsor and Golinski.
Help Dump DOMA. The faster the better.