Obama Orders End to Defense of Federal Gay Marriage Law

[Kber]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/24marriage.html

WASHINGTON — President Obama, in a major legal policy shift, has directed the Justice Department to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act — the 1996 law that bars federal recognition of same-sex marriages — against lawsuits challenging it as unconstitutional.

more at link.

I'm sure it's somewhere on DU already, but I didn't see it so I apologize if it's a dupe.

Kber

[TheWraith]

1. It is here, yeah. But this cannot be posted too many times.

Party, anyone? :D

[bigwillq]

2. That's what I was just going to post.

"But this cannot be posted too many times"
Well, not word-for-word, but something along those lines! :)

:hi:

[Proud Liberal Dem]

3. Great news!

Let's hope that this signals the beginning of the end for DOMA, as well as anti-gay marriage laws in general. In Indiana we're apparently just getting started on enshrining bigotry into our constitution- though it will still take another legislature and then a voter referendum to approve it, so we're looking at 2-4 years more tops to get a constitutional amendment in place and that's assuming total GOP control domination in state government continues, so there's a decent chance that the whole issue might fizzle out and/or get blocked by another legislature in the meantime. For years we've had divided government (Republicans in Senate, Democrats in the House) and the Democrats always kept a lid on it but now that the GOP has a lock on nearly every statewide office, they finally got it through the House recently and it is a near certainty that the Senate will approve of it.