Albert Mohler: A Big Win for Gay Marriage in Massachusetts

Monday, July 12, 2010

While all eyes were on California, where a very high-profile case about same-sex marriage is moving to a judge’s ruling, a federal judge in Massachusetts handed down rulings in a pair of cases that struck at the heart of the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA], which passed into law in 1996. As the rulings stand now, DOMA is both challenged and weakened, and momentum for the judicial legalization of same-sex marriage grows.

The Massachusetts rulings came in the U.S. District Court in Boston, where Judge Joseph Tauro decided two cases, both representing challenges to parts of DOMA. In the end, Judge Tauro struck down one of the Act’s major provisions, but left the rest intact . . . for now.

When adopted in 1996, the Defense of Marriage Act represented a bi-partisan determination to define marriage, in terms of Federal law, as the union of a man and a woman. There were two main provisions within DOMA. One established the fact that the Federal government would not recognize same-sex marriages, even if legalized by individual states. Thus, there would be no extension of Federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples. the rest