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- Title
National Identity and the Defense of Marriage.
- Authors
Westervelt, Don
- Abstract
This article reviews the public statements of both the congressional supporters of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which was signed into law on Sept. 21, 1996 by U.S. President Bill Clinton, and those of President Clinton in an effort to better understand this exclusionary dynamic. DOMA was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Representative Robert Barr on May 7, 1996. There were 117 co-sponsors. It was introduced in the Senate the next day by Senator Donald Nickles, who had 24 co-sponsors from both parties. In introducing DOMA on the Senate floor, Senator Nickles explicitly referred to the May 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court case Baehr versus Lewin. This case stemmed from the efforts of six individuals to obtain marriage licenses from the state of Hawaii in December 1990. Supporters of DOMA also utilized much of the language employed by Justice White in his 1986 decision in Bowers versus Hardwick. In Bowers, a majority of the Court found that private consensual sexual relations between same sex couples were not constitutionally protected, and that states could, based on the nation's history of intolerance, legitimately implement laws that prohibited or punished such relations.
- Subjects
UNITED States; SAME-sex marriage laws; MARRIAGE law; MARRIAGE; GAY couples; BOWERS v. Hardwick; BAEHR v. Lewin (Supreme Court case)
- Publication
Constellations: An International Journal of Critical & Democratic Theory, 2001, Vol 8, Issue 1, p106
- ISSN
1351-0487
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-8675.00217