Ellen to Wed Portia; What about DOMA?
Here are two seemingly unrelated facts:
1. Comedienne Ellen DeGeneres and her girlfriend Portia de Rossi will get married in
2. One of the platform planks for the Democrats at this year's convention includes language to repeal DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act.
The DeGeneres and de Rossi nuptials were reported in US Magazine. The couple can wed because four justices on the California Supreme Court decided same-sex "marriage" should be legal, on the grounds that the millennia-long traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman was discriminatory.
DeGeneres has been outspoken about her plans to wed de Rossi, even confronting Senator John McCain about it when he appeared on her talk show earlier this summer (click here for video). In the
I think someday people will look back on this like women not having the right to vote and segregation and anything else that seems ridiculous that we don't all have the same rights.
And what does this have to do with DOMA and the liberal plan to repeal it? Two things. One, the Democrats not only are talking about repealing DOMA – a stand supported by presumed Democratic nominee Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – the party has also given $25,000 to activists working to keep same-sex “marriage,” and that would include DeGeneres's, legal in California.
Once the state Supreme Court opened the door for same-sex “marriage,” supporters of traditional marriage got to work on a ballot initiative that would create an amendment to the state constitution defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman. Their efforts were successful and Proposition 8 will be voted on by Californians on Election Day.
The Baptist Press reports that public records show the Democratic National Committee gave $25,000 to Equality for All, a homosexual activist group seeking to keep same-sex “marriage” legal. In other words the Democratic Party has taken a radical stand on marriage.
DOMA, which was passed with significant bipartisan support in 1996, bans any federal recognition of same-sex “marriage” and protects states from having to recognize same-sex “marriages” contracted in other states. Normally states are required to recognize “the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings” of other states under the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The threatened repeal of DOMA has major societal and cultural implications. If Obama, Pelosi and the liberals have their way, the federal government and states around the country that have amendments recognizing marriage as between one man and one woman could be forced to recognize – by way of expensive litigation, no doubt – same-sex “marriages” contracted in states where it is legal. So, if Ellen and Portia tire of Hollywood when they're old and gray, they could retire to, say, Alabama, where same sex "marriage" is illegal, and they could sue for the right to have their union recognized.
The threatened repeal of DOMA should be a major talking point this election season. Ellen and Portia have given the media a tremendous opportunity to address the issue of same-sex “marriage,” DOMA and the Democrats' support of
Kristen Fyfe is senior writer at the Culture and Media Institute, a division of the
