Washington D.C. has begun registering domestic partnerships.
Doesn’t this conflict with Congress’ passage of DOMA? Why the mixed signals? How will the Supreme Court handle domestic partnerships in regard to the “full faith and credit” clause?
Doesn’t DOMA allow the states to ban gay marriage, rather than banning gay marriage itself? That was my impression anyway, but I’m way too lazy right now to go look it up.
I offer my hearty congratulations to Gobear, and trust he will understand if overlook the tradition of bride-kissing.
That would be swell, except that I live across the Potomac in feudal, reactionary NoVa, where same-sex domestic partnerships will be legal when pigs fly. Hmm, maybe I can talk the BF into moving to Dupont Circle…
Re the other questions, I’d think that the legality of domestic partnership has already been breached by Vermont. The full faith and credit clause is in abeyance as long as DOMA is on the books, so I guess we’ll have to look to the Supreme Court to rule when a test case comes before it. (I can already tell you the decision: DOMA upheld, 5-4)
Yay Vermont! Also, Quebec recently did something similar (not the US I know, but North America anyway).
It’s obvious, at least to me, that the time is past due for a domestic partnership law. There are some arguments against granting full marriage benefits to homosexual couples*, but my uncle and his partner of some 20 odd years deserve to be afforded next of kin status and all the tax, social, and inheritance rights that implies. They deserve something, dammit. They are better citizens than I am.
[sub]*most notably that these unions don’t usually raise children and there are practicality issues in implementing such laws in order to prevent abuse of said laws, but these issues can be worked out[/sub]
Wait, wait…doesn’t DC have to have Congress sign off on its local ordinances? They of the passage of DOMA? How did this squeak through?
jayjay
The Defense of Marriage Act permits (but does not require) states to not recognize same-sex marriages, even if same-sex marriages are recognized in other states.
Prior to the DoMA, any marriage legally recognized in the state in which the marriage was performed was required to be recognized by all other states, even if such marriage would not be valid according to the laws of those other states. This was done so that, for example, if two 16-year-olds got married in a state where the minimum age for marriage was 16, and they moved into (or drove through) another state where the minimum age for marriage was 18, their marriage would not suddenly cease to be valid in that other state.
When the Hawaiian Supreme Court declared that Hawaii’s constitution required same-sex marriages to be recognized, homophobes everywhere suddenly realized that same-sex marriages performed in Hawaii would, under current law-at-the-time, have to by recognized by all the other states in the Union. Even Mississippi. So, under the onus of this “threat,” Congress moved quickly to make an exception to the old marriages-valid-everywhere law. The resulting legislation went under the somewhat misleading title of “The Defense of Marriage Act.”
Eventually, the Hawaiians amended their Constitution to eliminate the possibility of same-sex marriage, so now the DoMA does nothing. No state recognizes same-sex marriage, and so not requiring states to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in a different state is a moot issue.
In view of the fact that the Vermont civil union law was passed in response to the State Supreme Court’s ruling that having marriage available only to straights violated the rights of gays under that state’s constitution, and therefore (I believe explicitly) grants “civilly united partners” (which sounds more like partnership law than marriage law!;)) the same rights as married couples, would it not be incumbent on Vermont to have to defend its civil union law as equivalent to marriage vis-a-vis full faith and credit in order to honor its own law?
Secondly, does anyone know anything more about the proposed Constitutional amendment (cosponsored by two N.C. congresscritters, thankfully neither mine) that would explicitly define marriage as between one man and one woman – where it stands, what is the likelihood of passage, etc.?
Report
I dunno, it seems to me that states’ rights activists would be against DOMA since it so flagrantly flies in the face of full faith and credit.
If it’s 100% the same as a traditional marriage but we call it something else, would that be ok with everybody? 
Esprix
Actually, one of the ironic things I find about Hawaii’s involvement in this is that there have been marriages which were legal in Hawaii but not in other states, if I understand things correctly. I’m not sure how long marriages between people of different races were illegal in some Southern states or how heavily enforced those laws were, but I know they continued in effect after Hawaii became a state and, based on statistics from the early 90’s, Hawaii’s the most racially mixed state in the union.
In other words, in response to the cry “but that would mean marriages would be legal in some states but not in others”, it’s already happened.
CJ
Has DOMA been challenged to the Supreme Court yet?
Since there is no such thing in any of the states as “gay marriage”, per se, there is no basis to bring a case on DOMA to the Court.
Vermont’s laudable but halfhearted attempt to create an “equivalent” to marriage will be semanticized to death on the basis that it’s not “marriage”.
jayjay
I was just reading here that Ontario now recognizes same sex marriages. Same sex couples will now enjoy all the rights under the law that everyone else does.
Now we need the bass ackwards tards that run the government here to do the same…