Boston, Mass., Jul 9, 2009 / 15:57 pm
The state of Massachusetts is challenging the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), claiming that the federal law which defines marriage as a union of a man and a woman violates states’ rights and is unjustly discriminatory. One pro-marriage advocate said the move was an attempt to “judicially export” homosexual “marriage.”
DOMA was enacted in part to help protect other states from being required by the full faith and credit cause of the U.S. Constitution to legalize same-sex “marriage” if one state were to do so.
Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, who filed the anti-DOMA suit in U.S. District Court in Boston, charged that the law interferes with the state’s right to define the marital status of residents. The suit also argues the law forces the state to discriminate against same-sex “married” couples on certain health benefits and burial rights or risk losing federal funding, the Boston Globe reports.
“Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people,” the suit says.