10.17.13

Cantwell and Murray to Prez: Act Fast on DOMA

By:  Seattle Weekly - Matt Driscoll
Source: Seattle Weekly

U.S. Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray - along with 37 other members of the Senate - sent a letter to President Barack Obama today, urging the Commander-in-Chief to “swiftly and comprehensively implement the Supreme Court’s landmark decision ... striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).”

The letter, which can be found in its entirety here, was led by California’s Senator Dianne Feinstein, and calls on Obama to “ensure that legally-married, same-sex couples are treated equally under Federal law regardless of where they live, to the greatest extent possible.” The senators note that, “Only by doing this can we truly provide equal protection to the married couples that have long borne the brunt of DOMA’s unconstitutional discrimination.”

As Seattle Weekly and plenty of others have noted, many questions remain for same-sex couples even in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling. Some of the trickiest involve the 37 states where same-sex marriage has not yet been legalized.

In the letter, Cantwell, Murray and the collection of their colleagues also call for DOMA to be fully repealed, making it not subject to “a potentially shifting Supreme Court majority,” or “vulnerable to changing Administrations.”