Attorney Says DOMA Challenge Floodgates Open
by Allie Martin and Jenni Parker
July 23, 2004
(AgapePress) - The president of Liberty Counsel finds nothing surprising in the fact that a same-sex couple recently married in Massachusetts has filed a legal challenge against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). He says this lawsuit was to be expected, and more like it will undoubtedly follow.
Attorneys filed the suit in a Tampa federal court earlier this week on behalf of Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether, a Florida lesbian couple. The two women recently traveled to Massachusetts and obtained a marriage license, and now they are seeking recognition of that license in Florida.
Mat Staver | |
Mat Staver, president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, says the lesbian couple's legal challenge is no surprise, and Florida is only the first of many states where such a suit is going to be filed. The case involves DOMA at the federal and the state level, Staver explains, because Florida has its own Defense of Marriage Act, "a law that says marriage is the union of one man and one woman and same-sex marriage is banned. So this will be a direct attack on Florida's Defense of Marriage Act."Florida's DOMA, drafted by Staver and passed in 1997 by the state legislature, states unequivocally that "Marriages between persons of the same sex entered into in any jurisdiction, whether within or outside the State of Florida ... are not recognized for any purpose in this state."
And in addition to DOMA, Florida law clearly defines marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife." Meanwhile, the federal DOMA states in terms equally clear that no state or territory of the U.S. is required to recognize a marriage or marriage-like arrangement between two people of the same sex on the basis of its recognition as such by some other jurisdiction.
Liberty Counsel, a national public-interest law firm based in Orlando, intervened in the federal court case to defend the federal and state DOMA laws under attack. Staver says this case "underscores why the problem that is beginning in Massachusetts is spreading throughout the rest of the country."
Now that the decision of four Massachusetts judges has resulted in legalizing same-sex marriage in that state, Staver believes the public can expect to see many more legal challenges launched against those states that have, under the federal DOMA, chosen not to recognize another state's same-sex marriages.
"We know that at least 46 states have people residing in them right now, where these individuals have gone to Massachusetts and come back to those states with a same-sex marriage license," the pro-family attorney observes. "So what's happening is, we'll see these suits all over the United States."
Numerous lawsuits nationwide are already challenging the constitutionality of DOMA, the Liberty Counsel spokesman says. That is why the Federal Marriage Amendment needs to be passed, Staver asserts, because if such lawsuits prevail, all the states could end up being forced to recognize so-called same-sex marriages.
