Barack Obama campaigned for President on a platform of repealing DOMA, and when he was running for the Senate in 2004, he wrote a letter to a gay Chicago newspaper calling DOMA "abhorrent" and its repeal "essential." Despite those stated positions, and despite large (and growing) American majorities in favor of granting legal rights to same-sex couples on a fully equal basis, a repeal of DOMA was never even brought up for a vote during the last two years, and it's now very difficult to envision legislative repeal of this ban. Nor was a separate bill to provide same-sex couples with the same immigration rights as opposite-sex couples considered. Additionally -- just as is true for Don't Ask/Don't Tell -- because the Obama DOJ defended the constitutionality of DOMA in court and then obtained a stay of the court's ruling striking down the law while the DOJ appeals, DOMA continues to be enforced as the law of the land, resulting in the active, ongoing denial of a whole slew of vital federal legal rights to same-sex couples in the U.S.
Glenn Greenwald
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