Former US President Bill Clinton is pictured July 27, 2012, at the Convention Center in Washington, DC. (photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images)
08 March 13
n
1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that was only 17
years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the union was
same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal right, but
some were moving in that direction.
Washington, as a result, was
swirling with all manner of possible responses, some quite draconian. As
a bipartisan group of former senators stated in their March 1 amicus
brief to the Supreme Court, many supporters of the bill known as DOMA
believed that its passage "would defuse a movement to enact a
constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended
the debate for a generation or more." It was under these circumstances
that DOMA came to my desk, opposed by only 81 of the 535 members of
Congress.
On March 27, DOMA will come before the Supreme Court,
and the justices must decide whether it is consistent with the
principles of a nation that honors freedom, equality and justice above
all, and is therefore constitutional. As the president who signed the
act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is contrary to those
principles and, in fact, incompatible with our Constitution.
Because Section 3 of the act defines marriage as being
between a man and a woman, same-sex couples who are legally married in
nine states and the District of Columbia are denied the benefits of more
than a thousand federal statutes and programs available to other
married couples. Among other things, these couples cannot file their
taxes jointly, take unpaid leave to care for a sick or injured spouse or
receive equal family health and pension benefits as federal civilian
employees. Yet they pay taxes, contribute to their communities and, like
all couples, aspire to live in committed, loving relationships,
recognized and respected by our laws.
When I signed the bill, I included a statement
with the admonition that "enactment of this legislation should not,
despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be
understood to provide an excuse for discrimination." Reading those words
today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for
discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be
overturned.
We are still a young country, and many of our landmark
civil rights decisions are fresh enough that the voices of their
champions still echo, even as the world that preceded them becomes less
and less familiar. We have yet to celebrate the centennial of the 19th
Amendment, but a society that denied women the vote would seem to us now
not unusual or old-fashioned but alien. I believe that in 2013 DOMA and
opposition to marriage equality are vestiges of just such an unfamiliar
society.
Americans have been at this sort of a crossroads often
enough to recognize the right path. We understand that, while our laws
may at times lag behind our best natures, in the end they catch up to
our core values. One hundred fifty years ago, in the midst of the Civil
War, President Abraham Lincoln concluded a message to Congress by posing
the very question we face today: "It is not 'Can any of us imagine better?' but 'Can we all do better?' "
The answer is of course and always yes. In that spirit, I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor,
and the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this
struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense
of Marriage Act.
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