The Cali Garmo

goes Gay

DOMA and Bob Barr

By gay , Published on Tue 06 January 2009
Category: law

Bob Barr, the original creator of the Defense of Marriage Act, does a complete reversal on his views and now is in favor of repealing the Act.

In 1996 Hawaii seemed very close to becoming the first state to allow same-sex marriages. This cause much contraversy throughout the U.S. and so the then freshmen member of the House of Representatives, Bob Barr, created the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA was created in order to make it so that a same-sex marriage in one state is not valid in any other state. This was required since the U.S. constitution has a 'full faith and credit' clause which basically states that states must respect 'public acts, records, and judicial rulings' of other states. In essence, once same-sex marriage was allowed in Hawaii, then if you were married in Hawaii you were legally married everywhere.

Bob Barr was successfully able to stop this by the DOMA which was enacted under the then president Bill Clinton. But now Bob Barr has changed his mind. He now feels his original intent of the bill is not understood correclty and that it is being used against his wishes. According to Barr

"The first part of DOMA, then, is a partial bow to principles of federalism, protecting the power of each state to determine its definition of marriage. The second part sets a legal definition of marriage only for purposes of federal law, but not for the states. That was the theory."

The definition of course being that marriage is between a man and a woman. Naturally the law did not go over the way that Barr wanted as the DOMA is now used to try and show that the definition of marriage should be between a man and a woman only.

Source: LA Times Opinion Piece written by Bob Barr found here.