Vermont officials respond to DOMA act

by Becky Hayes, Vermont Business Magazine The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision Wednesday in Windsor v. United States that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional.
"Today's DOMA decision is a critical step toward equality for all families,’said Governor Peter Shumlin Wednesday. ‘Married same-sex couples in a dozen states nationwide now cannot be deprived by the federal government of the rights and benefits they deserve. This is an historic decision.
‘In Vermont, we have known for a long time that all of us, regardless of whether we are straight or gay, deserve the same right to marry the person we love,’Shumlin said.
Senator Bernie Sanders welcomed the Supreme Court ruling.
‘This is good news for all Americans who believe in the words carved in marble on the front of the Supreme Court building, equal justice under law,’Sanders said. ‘But it is a special victory for gays and lesbians married in Vermont and the increasing number of other states that followed our lead in granting same-sex couples the same rights as everyone else.’
In 1996, Sanders was one of only 67 House members who voted against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to gay spouses. He is a cosponsor of Senate legislation to repeal the law and he joined other members of Congress in a friend-of-the-court brief urging justices to void the discriminatory statute.
Sanders also welcomed a separate ruling that threw out a challenge to a California law legalizing gay marriages in that state. Justices set aside the outcome of a state voter referendum on Proposition 8 that attempted to rescind the state law. The court stopped short of declaring that gay people in all states have a constitutional right to marry.
Representative Peter Welch called the ruling an historic day in America.
"The highest court in the land has properly thrown on the trash heap of history a discriminatory law that denies rights to Americans based on who they love,’Welch said. ‘With this uplifting decision, the Court is sending a clear message to our country: the days of denying rights to same-sex couples are numbered.
‘As Vermonters affirmed years ago, all Americans are equal under the law regardless of sexual orientation,’Welch said. ‘There is much more work to be done, but this is a positive step on the inevitable path to full equality. The Court should now finish the job and knock down state laws banning marriage equality.’
As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senator Patrick Leahy led the panel’s consideration of the legislation and he chaired the first-ever congressional hearing examining the effects of DOMA on American families. The Judiciary Committee’s subsequent approval of the DOMA repeal bill, in 2011, has been a catalyst in the years since then for re-examining this issue on Capitol Hill. Leahy also joined in filing an amicus brief urging the Court to strike down DOMA.
‘Today’s ruling confirms my belief that the Constitution protects the rights of all Americans, and that no one should suffer from discrimination based on who they love,’Leahy said. ‘This ruling upholds the motto engraved in Vermont marble above the Supreme Court building that declares, ‘Equal justice under the law.’
‘This decision means that we no longer have a tier of second-class marriages in this nation and in the State of Vermont,’Leahy said. ‘I applaud this important milestone in the continued march toward equality and pledge to work to ensure that all our laws respect the rights of every American.’
Leahy had originally voted for DOMA in 1996, as did then senator and now Vice President Joe Biden, which President Clinton signed into law. The majority of Democratic senators at the time and all of the Republicans, including Vermont's James Jeffords, voted for it.
Three years later, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled on December 20, 1999, that gay and lesbian couples must be granted the same benefits and protections given married couples of the opposite sex. The bill that emerged in Vermont and signed into law by Governor Howard Dean behind closed doors in 2000 was called "civil unions," not yet "gay marriage," (gay marriage passed the Legislature in 2009, the first state legislature to do so, and then withstood a veto from Governor Jim Douglas.)
But so uproarious was that first civil union law even in Vermont that many Democrats and Republicans who voted for it in the Vermont Legislature lost their positions, which resulted in Republican control of the House for four years.
But same sex civil unions became a tourism windfall for the state and the Vermont hospitality industry, as country inns to the state tourism office actively promoted same sex weddings. The state has even set up an entire Web page devoted to LGBT tourism.