DOMA Damages Same-Sex Families and Their Children
(Excerpted from the ABA Family Advocate)
As Justice Ginsburg famously noted in 1996, the history of our constitution is the history of extending constitutional protections to those who were once ignored or excluded from American society. [United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996)]. That journey to citizenship is well under way for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans as well. The first efforts to secure legal respect for committed relationships, inspired by the U.S. Supreme Court’s crucial 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), striking down state “anti-miscegenation” laws, were summarily dismissed, a mark of gay people’s outsider status at that time. See, e.g., Baker v. Nelson, 191 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 1971).
Over the years, however, the larger community has come to understand that gay people are part of the fabric of American life, a perception confirmed by a historical review of polling information. See Karlyn Bowman & Adam Foster, Attitudes About Homosexuality & Gay Marriage, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research (June 3, 2008). In addition to issues such as hate crime laws, nondiscrimination in employment, housing and public accommodations, and parenting issues, same-sex couples also are seeking to take on the legal obligations and commitments of marriage. Inaugurated by the Hawaii marriage litigation in the early 1990s, state courts and legislatures have been examining anew the question of what legal rights and protections should be extended to committed same-sex couples.