DOMA Repeal Introduced, Time to Get to Work

It’s official — the Respect for Marriage Act has been introduced and now it’s time to repeal the discriminatory so-called “Defense of Marriage Act.”  Go to www.RepealDOMAnow.org and tell your member of Congress to join on as a co-sponsor (you can see the initial list of co-sponsors after the jump).

HRC President Joe Solmonese joined the Members of Congress at this morning’s event and delivered the following remarks:

Thank you Representatives Nadler, Baldwin, and Polis for your leadership on the Respect for Marriage Act. Today we stand with you, with civil rights leaders, and most importantly with families to declare that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act must go.

The name Respect for Marriage Act is as good a name as the name “Defense of Marriage Act” was a deceptive one. For while DOMA defended nothing and no one, its repeal will give long overdue respect not only to marriages, but to people.

When DOMA passed in 1996, no U.S. state recognized that same-sex couples had an equal right to marry. So when this Congress voted to withhold Social Security family benefits, limit family and medical leave, tax family health benefits, and deny families over 1,100 other protections—the slap in the face was real, but the tangible harms were not yet felt.

Today thousands of couples are married. Today, several states recognize our equality. Yet we remain strangers under federal law.

The harm is real.

Although this is a unique and unacceptable indignity, the problem is not about dignity alone. DOMA hurts families. With us today, there are federal government employees who have high quality benefits. But those who are LGBT—including two members of Congress with us today— are paid less than their colleagues because their families are ineligible for benefits such as health insurance and pensions. Since our families are also carved out of Social Security family benefits even if we’re married, financial security is harder to attain—for our partners and our children. And workers who are offered equal health benefits for same-sex spouses pay taxes on them—which often makes the coverage unaffordable.

DOMA affects us and our families in more ways than I could say here. It defends nothing, helps no one, and harms real people every day.

I thank the sponsors for committing to replace insult with respect: respect for marriage, respect for families, and respect for millions of Americans who deserve it.

The best spokespeople for repealing DOMA are those whose lives are affected by it every day.  A number of same-sex couples were present at the press conference including Lara Ballard and Gigi Sohn who delivered this message to leaders first hand:

We are delighted to support the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). We are a lesbian couple that resides in the District of Columbia. Lara has worked for the U.S. Government for virtually her entire adult life, starting with a four-year tour of duty as an Army Air Defense Artillery Officer. Gigi has been a public interest lawyer for most of her career. We have a four year-old daughter named Yosselin. We were joined in a civil union in Vermont in 2007 and were married in California on September 12, 2008.

We rejoiced when our marriage became legal in our home jurisdiction on July 7 this year, because we believed that we had finally achieved equality with our heterosexual peers. We were wrong. It soon became abundantly clear that DOMA still renders us second-class citizens.

Here’s what happened: earlier this month, we went to a real estate lawyer to do what heterosexual couples do every day — put each other on the titles for our respective homes. We thought that we would sign the deeds, pay the lawyer for his time, and be done with it, just like other married couples. However, because under DOMA we are not considered married under federal law, this seemingly simple transaction is not so simple.

Because we are not considered married under DOMA, the “gift” we would be making to each other by putting ourselves on the title to each other’s property could be subject to federal estate taxes after we die. Gifts from one heterosexual spouse to another are exempt from not only from estate taxes, but from federal laws that limit the amount of monetary gifts you can make to others. This discriminates against us in two ways. First, if our estate exceeds the federal limit, the gifts we give each other become taxable up to 45% of the amount of the gift! Second, our ability to make non-taxable gifts is reduced by the amount of this real estate transaction.

Who gets hurt most by this discriminatory treatment? Our daughter, who will be forced to pay taxes on a transaction that heterosexuals take for granted. It is the ultimate irony that while those who oppose full LGBT equality insist that they are doing so to “protect children,” laws like DOMA will harm the very people they purport to be protecting.

Earlier this summer, we went to a cocktail party hosted by a good friend with progressive values. She asked us and another gay couple why we couldn’t simply contract for our equal rights. I’m sorry to say that this attitude is common among many well-meaning people. But notwithstanding the fact that attempting to ensure that you are protected under the law through legal contracts is expensive and time consuming, DOMA and state laws like it render any contractual solution inadequate. Even if you don’t feel much sympathy for a couple that owns two pieces of real estate and worries that they will exceed estate tax limits, there are many thousands of other same-sex couples who stand to lose much more from DOMA, like the ability of a same-sex partner to remain in this country or to be covered by a partner’s health insurance.

Same-sex marriage is here to stay, and there is nothing the so-called “protectors of marriage” can do to change that. But as we now are painfully aware, DOMA remains a roadblock to full marriage equality. We look forward to working with Representative Nadler and the other co-sponsors of the Respect for Marriage Act to ensure its passage in this Congress.

David Wilson, a member of HRC’s Board of Directors and a plaintiff in the Goodridge case offered these remarks:

My husband, Rob Compton and I were married on May 17th, 2004, which was the first day of legal same-sex marriages in Massachusetts. We are the proud parents of five adult children and six grandchildren. Our children and grandchildren live in four different states, two of which do not recognize our legal marriage. Several times a year we travel to Colorado and California to visit with our two daughters, son, and granddaughter. We are not legally protected once we leave Massachusetts so we carry our marriage license, health care proxy, power of attorney and living wills hoping we’ll never have to use them and afraid that if we do, we will not be able to protect and care for each other.

Since our marriage, Rob has had hip replacement surgery, been treated at local emergency rooms for seven kidney stones, diverticulitis, and an irregular heartbeat. I have had two surgeries for the removal of a malignant thyroid. The medications that Rob and I take for his irregular heartbeat, my blood pressure, cholesterol and thyroid supplement, keep us physically healthy but unfortunately our marriage license does not provide the emotional and psychological security that it does for opposite sex married couples.

Rob and I have each worked more than thirty years earning the right to employee pension plans, 401Ks, and company healthcare plans but clearly those plans were designed to protect us as individuals but not as a legally married same-sex couple. We have and continue to pay our Federal taxes and well as our Social Security tax that should provide benefits to us as a legally married couple but does not because of DOMA.

Rob and I are planning our retirement but ask ourselves, “what will happen if one of us should become ill disabled or God forbid, die”. The surviving spouse could be forced to sell our home to pay the inheritance and estate tax because our property does not pass without tax penalty to the survivor as property does for opposite-sex couples. If one of us needs to enter a nursing home, again our home would have to be sold which could mean one of us becomes homeless. Illness, disability or death spells disaster for one of us unlike all legally married same-sex couples.

We’ve raised our families, paid our Corporate and Federal dues and now we want to enjoy our senior years with our children and grandchildren. Finally we want to retire with the security that we deserve after a lifetime of work – we should have the same rights and benefits that every other legally married opposite-sex couple in this country enjoys! I say absolutely!

Original co-sponsors (list may increase throughout the day):

Representative Jerry Nadler
Representative Tammy Baldwin
Representative Jared Polis
Representative John Conyers
Representative Eliot Engel
Representative Mary Jo Kilroy
Representative Jackie Speier
Representative Shelly Berkley
Representative Alcee Hastings
Representative Carolyn Maloney
Representative Mike Quigley
Representative Steve Israel
Representative Jan Schakowsky
Representative Raul Grijalva
Representative Neil Abercrombie
Representative Diana DeGette
Representative Pete Stark
Representative Robert Wexler
Representative Peter Welch
Representative Linda Sanchez
Representative Lynn Woolsey
Representative Mike Capuano
Representative Anthony Weiner
Representative Jose Serrano
Representative John Olver
Representative Earl Blumenauer
Representative Ed Markey
Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton
Representative Paul Hodes
Representative Gary Ackerman
Representative Nydia Velazquez
Representative Rob Andrews
Representative Chaka Fattah
Representative George Miller
Representative Barbara Lee
Representative Maurice Hinchey
Representative Mike Honda
Representative Jim McDermott
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz
Representative Diane Watson
Representative Nita Lowey
Representative Yvette Clarke
Representative Keith Ellison
Representative Robert Brady
Representative Luis Gutierrez
Representative Donna Edwards
Representative Dennis Kucinich
Representative Frank Pallone
Representative Rush Holt
Representative John Larson
Representative Ed Towns
Representative John Lewis
Representative Bobby Scott
Representative Xavier Becerra
Representative Jim Moran
Representative Bob Filner
Representative Henry Waxman
Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard
Representative Chris Murphy
Representative Ed Pastor
Representative Lois Capps
Representative Martin Heinrich
Representative Bill Delahunt
Representative Jim McGovern
Representative Brad Sherman
Representative Joe Sestak
Representative Howard Berman
Representative Carol Shea-Porter
Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr.
Representative Steve Rothman
Representative Patrick Kennedy
Representative Susan Davis
Representative Chellie Pingree
Representative Mazie Hirono
Representative Paul Tonko
Representative Niki Tsongas
Representative Hank Johnson
Representative Doris Matsui
Representative Jane Harman
Representative Grace Napolitano
Representative John Tierney
Representative Jim Himes
Representative Joe Courtney
Representative Mike Doyle
Representative Zoe Lofgren
Representative Sam Farr
Representative Greg Meeks
Representative Charlie Rangel
Representative Dan Maffei
Representative Rosa DeLauro
Representative Kathy Castor
Representative Betty McCollum