Will Courts Find DOMA Legal?
by Fred Jackson, Jenni Parker, and Allie Martin
July 20, 2004
(AgapePress) - A lesbian couple living in Florida is set to go to court to challenge the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA.
Florida attorney Ellis Rubin is scheduled to file a lawsuit in Tampa, Florida, on behalf of Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether. According to a Baptist Press report, the two received a legal marriage license in Massachusetts July 2 and are now suing to have their marriage recognized as legal in their home state. Legal experts say their possession of a state-validated license definitely strengthens their case.
Pro-family groups have been predicting that such scenarios would occur in the wake of last year's Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, which effectively legalized homosexual marriage in that state. That is why pro-family forces have been pushing for a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to enshrine traditional marriage in the Constitution of the United States.
The question of the constitutionality of the DOMA is central to the FMA controversy. The federal DOMA, which was signed into law back in 1996, gives states the option of choosing not to recognize another state's same-sex marriages and also prevents the federal government from recognizing homosexual marriages.
Some opponents of the FMA argue that the push for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage is premature since the DOMA has not yet been challenged successfully in court. However, FMA supporters point to the growing number of legal challenges cropping up in courts across the nation and say it is only a matter of time until the federal DOMA is overturned. Their fear is that, if that happens, every state will be forced to recognize Massachusetts' same-sex marriages.
U.S. Congressman Roger Wicker says the future of the nation rests on the battle for traditional marriage. The Republican representative for Mississippi's First Congressional District spoke last weekend at the Rally for Traditional Marriage, held in Tupelo, Mississippi. He told the audience there that the move to legalize same-sex marriage is nothing less than an assault on the traditional family.
The traditional family must be protected, Wicker asserts, because it is the most fundamental and essential component of society and has been for the last 5,000 years or more. He calls it "the first line of defense" against "almost everything that threatens America," and says, "If you look at anything that we throw tax dollars at, the family does it better. It's a better early childhood program, a better literacy program, and a better crime prevention than [anything] the government can do."
The lawmaker from Mississippi is hopeful that more people will get involved in defending traditional marriage -- especially, he says, as the majority of Americans realize what the battle for marriage amounts to, "the sort of slippery slope it entails."
According to Congressman Wicker, what is at stake are not only the legal, economic and constitutional principles that same-sex marriage affects, but "also the way it threatens traditional marriage, making it less meaningful and therefore less frequent, and the things that will do to children."
